“Oh!”
“A Canadian who has made a fortune in land and wood-pulp and has bought a place over here. When I showed him the Japanese garden, he said, ‘I’ll take this in the lump, stones, and fish, and trees, and the summer-house, and the little joss house. See?’”
“Was he very disappointed when you told him?”
“Oh, no. He asked me to name a price for fixing him up with an identical garden, including a god. ‘Seems sort of original to have a god in your garden.’ I said we were too busy for the moment, and that gods are expensive, and are not to be caught every day of the week.”
They laughed, looking into each other’s eyes.
“What queer things humans are!”
“A madman turned up here once whose mania was water lilies. He had an idea he was a lotus eater, and he stripped and got into the big lily tank and made a terrible mess of the flowers. It took us an hour to catch him and get him out, and we had him on our hands for a week, till his people tracked him down and took him home. He seemed quite sane on most things, and was a fine botanist, but he had this one mad idea.”
“Perhaps it was some enthusiasm gone wrong. One can sympathise with some kinds of madmen.”
“When one looks at things dispassionately one might be tempted to swear that half our civilisation is absolutely mad.”
He stood beside her for a while and watched her painting.