"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 on, glancing toward the picture of the moor; "it's real!" There was a hint of diffidence in Millicent's expression. "But you can hardly judge, can you? You have scarcely seen the English moors." "I've spent a while on the high Albertan plains, and you have the same things yonder; the vast sweep of sky, the rolling waste running on forever. It's all in that picture; how expressed, I don't know--there are only the grades of color, scarcely a line to gage the distance by. Still, the sense of space is vivid." Millicent blushed. "You're an indulgent critic; that drawing is my own." He did not appear embarrassed, though she saw that he had not suspected the fact. She had already noticed that when he might, perhaps, have looked awkward he only looked serious. "After what you have said," she resumed, "I'll show you the other things with greater confidence. Do you know, I thought all you Western people were grimly utilitarian?" He sat down and considered this. The man could laugh readily, but he was also characterized by a certain gravity, which she found refreshing by contrast with the light glibness to which she was more accustomed.