"And the love is genuine," said Sir James, fairly off at a gallop upon his hobby. "He doesn't set up. The love is almost a quality of his race. Yes, but his race doesn't always know what things are beautiful. There's the explanation of that building--race, which confounds logic and is quite untroubled by inconsistencies. There's Benoliel's race in every line of it. He's of the Orient. He loves flamboyancy and gaudiness. He may conceal it carefully from us. But every now and then it must break out, and it has run riot here. Does the East repair and mend? No, it lets its old buildings decay and builds afresh. That's why Mr. Benoliel passes by your stately houses all up for sale in their parks and builds this villa. Remember, Captain Rames, though Mr. Benoliel talks with you and walks with you, he doesn't think with you. Behind those old tired eyes of his, he thinks as the East thinks." Thus Sir James Burrell, and the car stopped at the front door before he could utter another word. He was not sorry, nor indeed were the other occupants of the carriage. He was merely trying his new paragraph on the dog, so to speak. He needed time to eliminate the unnecessary, and make it vivid with the single word, and fix it up with a nice juxtaposition of paradoxes and altogether to furbish it for presentation. "He does talk!" said Harry Rames to Cynthia. "Yes, doesn't he," she replied with a laugh, and then grew serious. "But I wonder whether he's right. I wonder whether Mr. Benoliel thinks and judges from principles which are true to him, but not true to us." Her eyes rested with a strange and thoughtful scrutiny on Harry's face. "Why should you trouble?" said Harry Rames. "It makes a little difference to me," said Cynthia. "Perhaps more than a little." For old Daventry's last words weighed upon her. He had bidden her in troubles and difficulties to seek advice from Isaac Benoliel. He had thought much of his wisdom. She had herself accepted it as a thing beyond question, and a timely help. Now, she began to ask herself, was his wisdom, if it was born of the East and tempered by the instincts of his race, fit for service in her generation and for her people? She pondered the question during the next two days, and leaned more and more to Sir James Burrell's way of thinking from a trivial reason; the inside of Culver agreed so completely with its exterior. Its flamboyancy set the eyes aching. Its wall papers were indigestibly rich with colored flowers, and never was there a blue so vividly blue as the blue of his velvet curtains and triple-pile carpets. It is true that there were treasures of art in Culver, glowing pictures of the early Flemish school, with their crowds of figures, each one a finished miniature, and behind the crowds the clear sky and translucent air; there were marvels of jade, and glorious little statues of silver and marble, but their delicate beauty was spoilt and lost in the riot of gorgeousness which framed them.