Italian Hours/Two Old Houses and Three Young Women, introduction

There are times and places that come back yet again, but that, when the brooding tourist puts out his hand to them, meet it a little slowly, or even seem to recede a step, as if in slight fear of some liberty he may take. Surely they should know by this time that he is capable of taking none. He has his own way--he makes it all right. It now becomes just a part of the charming solicitation that it presents precisely a problem--that of giving the particular thing as much as possible without at the same time giving it, as we say, away. There are considerations, proprieties, a necessary indirectness--he must use, in short, a little art. No necessity, however, more than this, makes him warm to his work, and thus it is that, after all, he hangs his three pictures.