Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/45

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there two of every view, mounted side by side? Why must she look at them in the box? At the last moment Augustus decided that it was undignified for the young female to sit on the floor and begged her to let him rearrange the show upon a table. The girl uttered an emphatic 'no,' and, squatting before the box, applied her eyes to the lenses.

'Oh, Augustus!' she cried, and felt a spinal chill of delight, a rapturous shuddering such as love had never raced through her body. By magic the flat photographs had become rounded realities. A jutting rock overhung one corner of the scene. It was so real that she wanted to put out her hands lest it fall upon her, lest she slip into the Alpine chasm below. Whirling waterfalls and mist floating up. In the distance snow-capped mountains. Two travellers in capes, rucksacks, and beards leaned against the flimsy fence that guarded the footpath. The illusion was painful in its reality.

'Ready for the next?'

'Oh, not yet. See, even the buttons on their coats are round.'

Many views of 'La Suisse'—and then...Italy. The Alps stunned her; Italy pierced her through. Milan's lovely lacework, layer upon layer, like a valentine. Lake Como, with iron chairs in the garden for Lanice to sit upon. The Rialto, so firm she might set her eager feet upon it. Miles away Augustus was saying that President and Mrs. Duke in Amherst—despised Amherst—had a small machine of this type. 'You hold it in your left hand and adjust the