Delaine's tone was stiff. He had thrown himself back in his chair with
folded arms, and a slight look of patience. "After all, you know, it may
only be one dull person telephoning to another dull person--on subjects
that don't matter!"

Elizabeth laughed and coloured.

"Oh! it isn't telephones in themselves. It's--" She hesitated, and
began again, trying to express herself. "When one thinks of all the
haphazard of history--how nations have tumbled up, or been dragged up,
through centuries of blind horror and mistake, how wonderful to see a
nation made consciously!--before your eyes--by science and
intelligence--everything thought of, everything foreseen! First of all,
this wonderful railway, driven across these deserts, against opposition,
against unbelief, by a handful of men, who risked everything, and
have--perhaps--changed the face of the world!"

She stopped smiling. In truth, her new capacity for dithyramb was no
less surprising to herself than to Delaine.

"I return to my point"--he made it not without tartness--"will the new
men be adequate to the new state?"

"Won't they?" He fancied a certain pride in her bearing. "They explained
to me the other day at Winnipeg what the Government do for the
emigrants--how they guide and help them--take care of them in sickness
and in trouble, through the first years--protect them, really, even from
themselves. And one thinks how Governments have taxed, and tortured, and
robbed, and fleeced--Oh, surely, surely, the world improves!" She
clasped her hands tightly on her knee, as though trying by the physical