s here wasn't the old religion any
more. We wanted to exercise and display our power over stone. We made
it into reeds and branches. We squirted it up in all these spires and
pinnacles. The priest and his altar were just an excuse. Do you think
people have ever feared and worshipped in this--this artist's lark--as
they did in Stonehenge?"

"I certainly do not remember that I ever worshipped here," she said.

Sir Richmond was in love with his idea. "The spirit of the Gothic
cathedrals," he said, "is the spirit of the sky-scrapers. It is
architecture in a mood of flaming ambition. The Freemasons on the
building could hardly refrain from jeering at the little priest they had
left down below there, performing antiquated puerile mysteries at his
altar. He was just their excuse for doing it all."

"Sky-scrapers?" she conceded. "An early display of the sky-scraper
spirit.... You are doing your best to make me feel thoroughly at home."

"You are more at home here still than in that new country of ours
over the Atlantic. But it seems to me now that I do begin to remember
building this cathedral and all the other cathedrals we built in
Europe.... It was the fun of building made us do it..."

"H'm," she said. "And my sky-scrapers?"

"Still the fun of building. That is the thing I envy most about America.
It's still large enough, mentally and materially, to build all sorts of
things.... Over here, the sites are frightfully crowded...."

"And what do you think we are building now? And what do you think you
are building over here?"

"What are we building now? I believe we have almost grown up. I believe
it is time we began to build in earnest. For good...."

"But are we building anything at all?"

"A new world."

"Show it me," she said.

"We're still only at the foundations," said Sir Richmond. "Nothing shows
as yet."

"I wish I could believe they were foundations."

"But can you doubt we are scrapping the old?..."

It was too late in the afternoon to go into the cathedral, so they
strolled to and fro round and about the west end and along the path
under the trees towards the river, exchanging their ideas very frankly
and freely about the things that had recently happened to the world and
what they thought they ought to be doing in it.

Section 5

After dinner our four tourists sat late and talked in a corner of the
smoking-room. The two ladies had vanished hastily at the first dinner
gong and reappeared at the