nice woman," she nudged Rachel to look at Miss Allan. "What's her name?"
The painted lady who always came in late, tripping into the room with
a prepared smile as though she came out upon a stage, might well
have quailed before Mrs. Flushing's stare, which expressed her steely
hostility to the whole tribe of painted ladies. Next came the two young
men whom Mrs. Flushing called collectively the Hirsts. They sat down
opposite, across the gangway.

Mr. Flushing treated his wife with a mixture of admiration and
indulgence, making up by the suavity and fluency of his speech for the
abruptness of hers. While she darted and ejaculated he gave Rachel a
sketch of the history of South American art. He would deal with one
of his wife's exclamations, and then return as smoothly as ever to his
theme. He knew very well how to make a luncheon pass agreeably, without
being dull or intimate. He had formed the opinion, so he told Rachel,
that wonderful treasures lay hid in the depths of the land; the things
Rachel had seen were merely trifles picked up in the course of one short
journey. He thought there might be giant gods hewn out of stone in the
mountain-side; and colossal figures standing by themselves in the middle
of vast green pasture lands, where none but natives had ever trod.
Before the dawn of European art he believed that the primitive huntsmen
and priests had built temples of massive stone slabs, had formed out of
the dark rocks and the great cedar trees majestic figures of gods and
of beasts, and symbols of the great forces, water, air, and forest among
which they lived. There might be prehistoric towns, like those in Greece
and Asia, standing in open places among the trees, filled with the works
of this early race. Nobody had been there; scarcely anything was known.
Thus talking and displaying the most picturesque of his theories,
Rachel's attention was fixed upon him.