human
Are you going now? If not, why not stroll awhile with me?
gpt
Giotto and Botticelli,
human
I wish you would be in earnest; I am in earnest.
gpt
With all the earnestness in the world, Miss Stowe, I could only repeat the same reply.
human
What is it you find to like in them? Will you tell me?
gpt
It would take an age--a full half-hour; you would be quite tired out. Women are so much quicker in their mental processes than we are that you would apprehend what I was going to say before I could get it out; you would ascend all the heights, scour all the plains, and arrive at the goal before I came even in sight, where you would sit waiting, patiently or impatiently, as I, slowly and with mortified perception, approached.
human
Yes, we are quick; but we are superficial. I wish you would tell me.
gpt
I cannot deliver a discourse while walking, he said.
human
I require a seat.
gpt
Let us go to the amphitheatre; I often sit there for a while on the stone benches under the old statues. I like to see them standing around the circle; they are so serenely indifferent to the modern pencil-scrawlings on their robes, so calmly certain that their time will come again.
human
What you say is entirely charming. Still, I hardly think I can talk to the statues. I must have something more--more secluded.