merely passing the time about this; it was the fulfilment of preconceived and thought-out ideas which he had broached to her before marriage. The upshot of them, as she went over it in her mind now, did not really give a fair idea of them, since, taken in bulk, they savoured of too rooted a passion for education. But the various items of this menu had been suggested singly; it was only when they were put together that they became excessive. But to her mind now they formed a sort of soliloquy, delivered in Edgar's smooth voice, to this effect:
"You will like to see Canada, my darling, will you not? So let us go there directly after our marriage. The yacht will meet us at Liverpool, and we will go by the Northern route, where we shall certainly see an iceberg or two. Then we will leave the yacht at Quebec, and travel by the Canadian-Pacific to San Francisco. I am told that American enterprise has already largely repaired the destruction caused by the earthquakes. It will interest me, no less than you, to see the speed with which the most terrific convulsion of Nature is overcome by the industry of man. Think of us! Little pigmies, little ants on a planet, yet whatever Nature destroys is repaired by us in a minute. It is as if you stir up an ants' nest with a stick. How quickly they rebuild!
"Egypt, Lucia! How I long to see the valley of the tombs of the kings with you! What lights you will strike for me! How, with our imaginations helping each other, we will conjure up out of the past the spectre of bygone civilization! I think of my life before I knew you as the vision of the dry bones in Ezekiel. There were facts then, there were cut and plucked ideas then—all dry bones, and I wandered among them. Then you came; bone went to his bone, and already there is standing an army. But I want twenty armies—fifty armies!
"My darling, you don't appreciate Japanese art. I have often noticed that. I shall drag you to Japan; perhaps there I may be of use to you. Give me that chance, Lucia.
"Then for what we neither of us know. Let us see the Southern Islands; see where Stevenson lived, and where he voyaged. Tusitala, the teller of tales. We should both like to see Apia, should we not, and Vailima, and pluck a little of the sensitive plant which he warred against? Oh yes, it will take time; but nothing that is worth doing is waste of time. Two years. Shall we give ourselves two years, more or less, to get what is to be got from other lands, from the contemplation of other peoples?
