Elly's hand was hot and clasped her mother's very tightly. Marise bent
over the little girl and divined in the darkness that she was crying.
"Why, Elly darling, what's the matter?" she asked.

The child cried out passionately, on a mounting note, "Nothing, nothing!
_Nothing!_" She flung her arms around her mother's neck, straining her
close in a wild embrace. Little Mark, on the other side, yawned and
staggered sleepily on his feet. Elly gave her mother a last kiss, and
ran on ahead, calling over her shoulder, "I'm going to walk by myself!"

"_Well!_" commented the old gentleman.

Mr. Marsh had not been interested in this episode and had stood gazing
admiringly up at the huge pine-tree, divining its bulk and mass against
the black sky.

"Like Milton's Satan, isn't it?" was his comment as they walked on,
"with apologies for the triteness of the quotation."

For a time nothing was said, and then Marsh began, "Now I've seen it,
your rite of the worship of beauty. And do you know what was really
there? A handful of dull, insensitive, primitive beings, hardened and
calloused by manual toil and atrophied imaginations, so starved for any
variety in their stupefyingly monotonous life that they welcome
anything, anything at all as a break . . . only if they could choose, they
would infinitely prefer a two-headed calf or a bearded woman to your
flower. The only reason they go to see that is because it is a
curiosity, not because of its beauty, because it blooms once a year
only, at night, and because there is only one of them in town. Also
because everybody else goes to see it. They go to look at it only