“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.”