'Isn't that a phrase?'--the woman mused--'to cover our ignorance of how things go--and why? Why should we be so content to go the old way to destruction? If I were "the English" of this splendid specimen of a Cretan, I would at least find a new way to perdition.' 'Perhaps we shall!' They sat trying from the accounts of Lord Borrodaile's archaeological friends to reconstruct something of that vanished world. It was a game they had played at before, with Etruscan vases and ivories from Ephesus--the man bringing to it his learning and his wit, the woman her supple imagination and a passion of interest in the great romance of the Pilgrimage of Man. But to-day she bore a less light-hearted part--'It all came to an end!' she repeated. 'Well, so shall we.' 'But--we--_you_ will leave your like behind to "hold fast to the clue," as you said a little while ago.' 'Till the turn of the wheel carries the English down. Then somewhere else on our uneasy earth men will begin again----' '----the fruitless round! But it's horrible--the waste of effort in the world! It's worse than horrible. It's insane.' She looked up suddenly into his face. 'You are wise. Tell me what you think the story of the world means, with its successive clutches at civilization--all those histories of slow and painful building--by Ganges and by Nile and in the Isles of Greece.' 'It's a part of the universal rhythm that all things move to--Nature's way,' he answered. 'Or was it because of some offence against one of her high laws that she wiped the old experiments out? What if the meaning of history is that an Empire maintained by brute force shall perish by brute force!' 'Ah,' he fixed her with those eyes of his. 'I see where you are going.' 'You can't either of you go anywhere,' said Mrs. Freddy, appearing through the balcony window, 'till you've seen the children's pictures.' Vida's eye had once more fallen on the reproduction of one of the Cretan frescoes with a sudden intensification of interest. 'What is it?' Borrodaile asked, looking over her shoulder. Woman-like she offered the man the outermost fringe of her thought. 'Even Lady Whyteleafe,' she said, 'would be satisfied with the attention they paid to their hair.' 'Come, you two.' Mrs. Freddy was at last impatient. 'Jean's got the _really_ beautiful pictures, showing them to Geoffrey. Let us all go down to help him to decide which is the best.' 'Geoffrey?' 'Geoffrey Stonor--you know him, of course. But nobody knows the very nicest side of Geoffrey, do they?' she appealed to Borrodaile,--'nobody who hasn't seen him with children?' 'I never saw him with children,' said Vida, buttoning the last button of her glove. 'Well, come down and watch him with Sara and Cecil. They perfectly adore him.' 'No, it's too late.' But the fond mother drew her friend to the window. 'You can see them from here.'