's hideous," he answered. "It's as ugly as a heap of slag."

"It's nature at its wildest."

"That's Amanda at her wildest."

"Well, isn't it?"

"No! This land isn't nature. It's waste. Not wilderness. It's the other
end. Those hills were covered with forests; this was a busy civilized
coast just a little thousand years ago. The Venetians wasted it.
They cut down the forests; they filled the cities with a mixed mud of
population, THAT stuff. Look at it"!--he indicated the sleepers forward
by a movement of his head.

"I suppose they WERE rather feeble people," said Amanda.

"Who?"

"The Venetians."

"They were traders--and nothing more. Just as we are. And when they were
rich they got splendid clothes and feasted and rested. Much as we do."

Amanda surveyed him. "We don't rest."

"We idle."

"We are seeing things."

"Don't be a humbug, Amanda. We are making love. Just as they did. And
it has been--ripping. In Salona they made love tremendously. They did
nothing else until the barbarians came over the mountains...."

"Well," said Amanda virtuously, "we will do something else."

He made no answer and her expression became profoundly thoughtful. Of
course this wandering must end. He had been growing impatient for some
time. But it was difficult, she perceived, to decide just what to do
with him....

Benham picked up the thread of his musing.

He was seeing more and more clearly that all civilization was an effort,
and so far always an inadequate and very partially successful effort.
Always it had been aristocratic, aristocratic in the sense that it was
the work of minorities, who took power, who had a common resolution
against the inertia, the indifference, the insubordination and
instinctive hostility of the mass of mankind. And always the set-backs,
the disasters of civilization, had been failures of the aristocratic
spirit. Why had the Roman purpose faltered and shrivelled? Every order,
every brotherhood, every organization carried with it the seeds of
its own destruction. Must the idea of statecraft and rule perpetually
reappear, reclothe itself in new forms, age, die, even as life
does--making each time its almost infinitesimal addition to human
achievement? Now the world is crying aloud for a renascence of the
spirit that orders and controls. Human affairs sway at a dizzy height of
opportunity. Will they keep their footing there, or stagger? We have
got back at last to a time as big with opportunit