edly rushing
off on a new track. "I think it's affectation to compare the Oder to
music, and so do you, but the overhanging warehouses of Stettin take
beauty seriously, which we don't, and the average Englishman doesn't,
and despises all who do. Now don't say 'Germans have no taste,' or I
shall scream. They haven't. But--but--such a tremendous but!--they take
poetry seriously. They do take poetry seriously."

"Is anything gained by that?"

"Yes, yes. The German is always on the lookout for beauty. He may miss
it through stupidity, or misinterpret it, but he is always asking
beauty to enter his life, and I believe that in the end it will come. At
Heidelberg I met a fat veterinary surgeon whose voice broke with sobs as
he repeated some mawkish poetry. So easy for me to laugh--I, who never
repeat poetry, good or bad, and cannot remember one fragment of verse
to thrill myself with. My blood boils--well, I 'm half German, so put
it down to patriotism--when I listen to the tasteful contempt of the
average islander for things Teutonic, whether they're Bocklin or my
veterinary surgeon. 'Oh, Bocklin,' they say; 'he strains after beauty,
he peoples Nature with gods too consciously.' Of course Bocklin strains,
because he wants something--beauty and all the other intangible gifts
that are floating about the world. So his landscapes don't come off, and
Leader's do."

"I am not sure that I agree. Do you?" said he, turning to Mrs. Wilcox.

She replied: "I think Miss Schlegel puts everything splendidly;" and a
chill fell on the conversation.

"Oh, Mrs. Wilcox, say something nicer than that. It's such a snub to be
told you put things splendidly."

"I do not mean it as a snub. Your last speech interested me so much.
Generally people do not seem quite to like Germany. I have long wanted
to hear what is said on the other side."

"The other side? Then you do disagree. Oh, good! Give us your side."

"I have no side. But my husband"--her voice softened, the chill
increased--"has very little faith in the Continent, and our children
have all taken after him."

"On what grounds? Do they feel that the Continent is in bad form?"

Mrs. Wilcox had no idea; she paid little attention to grounds. She was
not intellectual, nor even alert, and it was odd that, all the same, she
should give the idea of greatness. Margaret, zigzagging with her friends
over Thought and Art, was conscious of a personality that transcended
their own and dwarfed th