past the arbour in which the evening light must
now be getting a little too soft for Miss Corner's book.

Miss Corner was drawn into the sunset party. She talked to Mr. Carmine
and displayed, Mr. Direck thought, great originality of mind. She said
"The City of the Sun" was like the cities the boys sometimes made on the
playroom floor. She said it was the dearest little city, and gave some
amusing particulars. She described the painted walls that made the tour
of the Civitas Solis a liberal education. She asked Mr. Carmine, who was
an authority on Oriental literature, why there were no Indian nor
Chinese Utopias.

Now it had never occurred to Mr. Direck to ask why there were no Indian
nor Chinese Utopias, and even Mr. Carmine seemed surprised to discover
this deficiency.

"The primitive patriarchal village _is_ Utopia to India and China," said
Mr. Carmine, when they had a little digested the inquiry. "Or at any
rate it is their social ideal. They want no Utopias."

"Utopias came with cities," he said, considering the question. "And the
first cities, as distinguished from courts and autocratic capitals, came
with ships. India and China belong to an earlier age. Ships, trade,
disorder, strange relationships, unofficial literature, criticism--and
then this idea of some novel remaking of society...."

Section 8

Then Mr. Direck fell into the hands of Hugh, the eldest son, and
anticipating the inevitable, said that he liked to walk in the rose
garden. So they walked in the rose garden.

"Do you read Utopias?" said Mr. Direck, cutting any preface, in the
English manner.

"Oh, _rather_!" said Hugh, and became at once friendly and confidential.

"We all do," he explained. "In England everybody talks of change and
nothing ever changes."

"I found Miss Corner reading--what was it? the Sun People?--some old
classical Italian work."

"Campanella," said Hugh, without betraying the slightest interest in
Miss Corner. "Nothing changes in England, because the people who want to
change things change their minds before they change anything else. I've
been in London talking for the last half-year. Studying art they call
it. Before that I was a science student, and I want to be one again.
Don't you think, Sir, there's something about science--it's steadier
than anything else in the world?"

Mr. Direck thought that the moral truths of human nature were steadier
than science, and they had one of those little discussions of rea