She
knew of the steam engine, employed it for pumping water in the age of the
Antonines. Sooner or later, she would have placed it on rails, and in
ships. Rome should have been the policeman, keeping the world in order,
making it a fit habitation. Her mistake was in regarding these things as
an end in themselves, dreaming of nothing beyond. From her we had
inherited the fallacy that man was made for the world, not the world for
man. Rome organized only for man's body. Greece would have legislated
for his soul.
They went into the drawing-room. Her father asked her to sing and Arthur
opened the piano for her and lit the candles. She chose some ballads and
a song of Herrick's, playing her own accompaniment while Arthur turned
the leaves. She had a good voice, a low contralto. The room was high
and dimly lighted. It looked larger than it really was. Her father sat
in his usual chair beside the fire and listened with half-closed eyes.
Glancing now and then across at him, she was reminded of Orchardson's
picture. She was feeling sentimental, a novel sensation to her.
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