The American laughed.
"A bit raw, like some of your prairie towns; but it hits the nail. I dare say we have missed our bargain. What matter! Our own chunk is as big as we can chew."
There was a moment's silence. Elizabeth's eyes were shining; even Philip sat open-mouthed and dumb, staring at Anderson.
In the background Delaine waited, grudgingly expectant, for the turn of Elizabeth's head, and the spark of consciousness passing between the two faces which he had learnt to watch. It came--a flash of some high sympathy--involuntary, lasting but a moment. Then Mariette threw out:
"And in the end, what are you going to make of it? A replica of Europe, or America?--a money-grubbing civilisation with no faith but the dollar? If so, we shall have had the great chance of history--and lost it!"
"We shan't lose it," said Anderson, "unless the gods mock us."
"Why not?" said Mariette sombrely. "Nations have gone mad before now."
"Ah!--prophesy, prophesy!" said the Chief Justice sadly. "All very well for you young men, but for us, who are passing away! Here we are at the birth. Shall we never, in any state of being, know the end? I have never felt so bitterly as I do now the limitations of our knowledge and our life."
No one answered him. But Elizabeth looking up saw the aspect of Mariette--the aspect of a thinker and a mystic--slowly relax. Its harshness became serenity, its bitterness peace. And with her quick feeling she guessed that the lament of the Chief Justice had only awakened in the religious mind the typical religious cry, "Thou, Lord, art the Eternal, and Thy years shall not fail."
At Field, where a most friendly inn shelters under the great shoulders of Mount Stephen, they left the car a while, took tea in the hotel, and wandered through the woods below it. All the afternoon, Elizabeth had shown a most delicate and friendly consideration for Delaine. She had turned the conversation often in his direction and on his subjects, had placed him by her side at tea, and in general had more than done her duty by him. To no purpose. Delaine saw himself as the condemned man to whom indulgences are granted before execution. She would probably have done none of these things if there had been any real chance for him.