"You're even deeper in the mud than I thought," he remarked.
"You live in a world of painted laths and shadows. All this passion
for the picturesque! Trash, my dear man, like a schoolgirl's
novelette heroes. You make up romances about gipsies and sailors,
and the blackguards they call pioneers, but you know nothing
about them. If you did, you would find they had none of the gilt
and gloss you imagine. But the great things they have got in common
with all humanity you ignore. It's like--it's like sentimentalising
about a pancake because it looked like a buttercup, and all the
while not knowing that it was good to eat."

At that moment the Australian entered the room to get a light for
his pipe. He wore a motor-cyclist's overalls and appeared to be
about to take the road. He bade them good night, and it seemed to
Dickson that his face, seen in the glow of the fire, was drawn and
anxious, unlike that of the agreeable companion at dinner.

"There," said Mr. Heritage, nodding after the departing figure.
"I dare say you have been telling yourself stories about that
chap--life in the bush, stockriding and the rest of it.
But probably he's a bank-clerk from Melbourne....Your romanticism is
one vast self-delusion, and it blinds your eye to the real thing.
We have got to clear it out, and with it all the damnable humbug of
the Kelt."

Mr. McCunn, who spelt the word with a soft "C," was puzzled.
"I thought a kelt was a kind of a no-weel fish," he interposed.

But the other, in the flood-tide of his argument, ignored
the interruption. "That's the value of the war," he went on.