Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/67

Rh stopping." She had tapped a spring in him, clearly, and the consequent flood might almost at any moment become copious. "Precious things are going out of our distracted country at a quicker rate than the very quickest—a century and more ago—of their ever coming in."

She was sharply struck, but was also unmistakably a person in whom stirred thought soon found connections and relations. "Well, I suppose our art-wealth came in—save for those awkward Elgin Marbles!—mainly by purchase too, didn't it? We ourselves largely took it away from somewhere, didn't we? We didn't grow it all."

"We grew some of the loveliest flowers—and on the whole to-day the most exposed." He had been pulled up but for an instant. "Great Gainsboroughs and Sir Joshuas and Romneys and Sargents, great Turners and Constables and old Cromes and Brabazons, form, you'll recognise, a vast garden in themselves. What have we ever for instance more successfully grown than your splendid 'Duchess of Waterbridge'?"

The girl showed herself ready at once to