"I don't know, it just came from thinking and reading about them--so much was fine, and so much--foolish." "Yes--and you think we are growing also to that stage in England? Perhaps you are right; we want some great national danger to pull us together." "You will rust out otherwise, and it will be such a pity." "You think we are good enough to keep?" "In your highest development--like Her Ladyship--you are, I should think, the best things for a country in the world." She knew he was drawing her out and was very pleased to be so drawn. "Tell me about us--what have we that is good?" "You have a sense of values--you know what is worth having--You have had hundreds of years to acquire the quality of looking ahead. No person of the classes from which the Radical statesmen are drawn has naturally the quality of looking ahead; he has to be told about it, and then get it if he can--it is not in his blood because his forebears only had to snatch what they could for themselves and their families day by day, and were not required to observe any broad horizon." "How very true--you are a student of heredity then, Miss Bush?" "Yes--it explains everything. I examine it in myself; I am always combating ordinary and cramping instincts which I find I have got." "How interesting!" "No common Radical could be a successful foreign minister, for instance--unless perhaps he were a Jew like Disraeli--but they have sense enough to know that themselves, and always choose a gentleman, don't they?" "You wonderful girl--do you ever air these views to my aunt? They would please her." "Of course not--Her Ladyship is my employer and she knows my place. I speak to her when I am spoken to." "You think we on our side are too casual, then?--That we are letting our birthright slip from us--I believe you are right." "Yes--you are too sure of yourselves. You think it does not matter really--and so you let the others creep in with lies and promises--you let them alter all the standards of public honour without a protest, and so you will gradually sink to the new level, too--I feel very sorry for England sometimes." "So do I--" his face altered. He looked sad, and in earnest and older. For the moment he forgot that he was wasting valuable time in the most agreeable task of exploiting the ideas of a new species of female; her words had touched a matter very near his weary heart. "What can we do?" he cried, in a tone of deep interest. "That is the question--what can we do?" "You should all wake up to begin with, like people do when they find that their houses have caught fire--at least, those whom the smoke has not suffocated first. You ought to make a concentrated, determined effort to save what you can to build a new shelter with." "Admitted--but how?"