y at her
brother.

"After all, though, the excessive tax on articles purchased by
travellers abroad and brought to this country serves as a legitimate
balance-wheel," said Carroll, coolly. One would not have thought that
he was in the least conscious of what was going on around him. "It is
mostly the very wealthy who go abroad and purchase articles of
foreign manufacture," he added, gently, "and it serves to even up
things a little for those who cannot go. It marks a notch higher on
the equality of possessions."

"Equality of fiddlesticks!" said the other man. "What the devil do
the masses of the poor in this country care about the foreign works
of art, anyhow? They don't want 'em. And what is going to compensate
this country for not possessing works of art which it will never
produce here, and which would tend to the liberal education of its
citizens?"

"Not many of its citizens in the broader sense would ever see those
works of art when they were here and shrined in the drawing-rooms of
the millionaires," said Carroll, smiling; "and as far as that goes,
the millionaires have them, anyhow. They are not stopped by the
tariff."

"Yes, they are, too, more than you think," declared the major; "and
not the millionaires alone are defrauded. Suppose I go over now, as I
may do"--he cast a glance at Ina--"as I may do, I say. Now there are
things over there that I want in my home--things that are not to be
had for love nor money in this country. Nothing of the sort is or
ever will be manufactured here. I am doing nothing whatever to injure
home industries if I bring them over. On the contrary, I am
benefiting the country by bringing to it articles which are, in a
way, an education which may serve as a stimulus to the growth of art
here. I enable those who can never go abroad, and to whom they will
be otherwise forever unknown, an opportunity to become acquainted
with them. But I have to leave them over there because I cannot
afford to pay this government for the privilege of spending my own
money and gratifying my own taste."

Anna Carroll, to cover her absorption in the beefsteak and the
dinner, joined in the conversation with feminine daring of
conclusion. "I suppose," said she, with a kind of soft sarcasm, "that
the government would not need to charge so much for its citizens'
privilege of buying little foreign vases and mosaics and breastpins
and little Paris frills if it did not conduct so many humanitarian
wars."