THE pictures of far places had stirred him but slightly: but to travel
with Annot, to see anything with Annot, would offer continual amusement
and surprise; her vigorous candor, her freedom from sham and petty
considerations, enveloped the most commonplace perspectives in an
atmosphere of high novelty. The trace of the vagabond, the detachment
of the born dweller in tents, woven so picturesquely through his being,
responded to her careless indifference to the tyranny of an established
and timid scheme of existence.
The following day her old, bright hardness had returned: she railed at
him in French, in German, in Italian; she called him the solemn shover,
Sir Anthony Absolute. And, holding Thomas Huxley's head directed toward
him, recommended that resigned quadruped to emulate Anthony's austere
and inflexible virtues.