"Be quiet. Stripped itself of all its lush luxuriance, and left for a
vestige only this little fester of its gashes."

"No, again," he once more interrupted. "I have seen remnants of the wood
and bark in a museum."

"Or has it hidden and compressed all its secret here?" I continued,
obliviously. "What if in some piece of amber an accidental seed were
sealed, we found, and planted, and brought back the lost aeons? What a
glorious world that must have been, where even the gum was so precious!"

"In a picture, yes. Necessary for this. But, my dear Miss Willoughby,
you convince me that the Amber Witch founded your family," he said,
having listened with an amused face. "Loveliest amber that ever the
sorrowing sea-birds have wept," he hummed. "There! isn't that kind of
stuff enough to make a man detest it?"

"Yes."

"And you are quite as bad in another way."

"Oh!"

"Just because, when we hold it in our hands, we hold also that furious
epoch where rioted all monsters and poisons,--where death fecundated
and life destroyed,--where superabundance demanded such existences, no
souls, but fiercest animal fire;--just for that I hate it."

"Why, then, is it fitted for me?"