“And why not, young lady?” Mr. Van Decht inquired.
“Because I love my old city too well to wish to see her modernized and made hideous,” Marie answered. “It is scarcely a feeling with which one could expect strangers to sympathize; but there are many others besides myself who would feel the same way.”
Mr. Van Decht nodded.
“Is that so? Well, nowadays the countries who place the picturesque before the useful are very few and far between. I guess it’s as well for the community at large that it is so. You would scarcely call that broken-down old omnibus, dragged along by a lame mule, a credit to Theos or a particularly picturesque survival.”
Marie shrugged her shoulders, and dismissed the subject with a little gesture of contempt. Mr. Van Decht waited for a minute, and then, as she remained silent, continued—
“A country which neglects the laws of progress is not a country which can ever hope for prosperity. Don’t you agree with me, sir?” he asked the King.
Ughtred nodded.
“I am afraid that I do,” he admitted. “Theos, with its vineyards and hand-ploughs, its simple hill-folk and its quaint village towns, is, from an artistic point of view, delightful. Yet I am bound to admit that for the sake of its children and the unborn generations, I would rather see factory chimneys in its valleys and mine shafts in the hills. The people are poor, and so long as we have to import everything we use and wear, we must get poorer and poorer. The country is productive enough. We have minerals and a wonderful soil. What we need is capital and enterprise.”
Marie shuddered.
“And you are a Tyrnaus!” she murmured, with a sidelong glance of reproach.