he
effect struck him as pleasantly chaste and cool. Among the rather mixed
ornaments were a couple of marble statuettes, the figures airily poised
and very finely wrought. Next, he noticed some daintily carved objects in
ivory, and a picture in water-color of a wide, gray stretch of moor with
distance and solitude skilfully conveyed. He had risen to examine it when
Millicent entered.

"I'm glad you came, though, as you're used to the life of the woods and
rivers, I'm a little diffident about showing you my sketches," she said.
"I'm afraid I've kept you waiting."

Lisle smiled and she liked the candidly humorous gleam in his eyes.

"Nasmyth warned me that I was early--or rather he said that if I were
going to visit anybody else I would have been too soon. I'd better
confess, however, that I've been making a good use of the time. Things of
this kind"--he indicated the statuettes--"are almost new to me. They
strike me as unusually fine."

"Yes," she answered, realizing that he had an artistic eye, "they are
beautiful--and one sees so many that are not. George brought them from
Italy for me. This"--she moved toward a representation in ivory of a
Mogul gateway--"is of course a different style, but it's remarkable in
its patient elaboration of detail. The mosque's not so fine. Nasmyth sent
me the pair from India; he once made a trip to the fringe of the
Himalayas."

Lisle examined the object carefully, and she waited with some interest
for his comment.

"It's wonderful," he declared. "I suppose it's a truthful copy?"

"I'm inclined to think the man who carved that had not the gift of
imagination. He merely reproduced faithfully what he saw."

"Different peoples have strikingly different ways, haven't they?"
commented Lisle. "While they were making that small Eastern arch, we'd
fling up a thriving wooden town or build a hotel of steel and cement to
hold a thousand guests. The biggest bridges that carry our great
freight-trains across the roaring gorges in the Rockies cost less labor."

"I should imagine it. What then?"

He studied the carved ivory.

"In a dry climate the original of this would last for centuries--it has
lasted since the days of the Moguls--an object of beauty for generations
to enjoy. Perhaps those old builders used their time as well as we do.
Our works serve their purpose, but one can't call them pretty."

She was pleased with his answer.

"I think that gets the strongest hold on me," he went