I think I confessed to nothing in my face.
Justine Caron was lost in the scene before us. She had, I fancy, scarcely
heard half that had been said. Roscoe said to her presently: "You like
it, do you not?"
"Like it?" she said. "I never saw anything so wonderful."
"And yet it would not be so wonderful without humanity there," rejoined
Mrs. Falchion. "Nature is never complete without man. All that would be
splendid without the mills and the machinery and Boldrick's cable, but it
would not be perfect: it needs man--Phil Boldrick and Company in the
foreground. Nature is not happy by itself: it is only brooding and
sorrowful. You remember the mountain of Talili in Samoa, Mr. Roscoe, and
the valley about it: how entrancing yet how melancholy it is. It always
seems to be haunted, for the natives never live in the valley. There is a
tradition that once one of the white gods came down from heaven, and
built an altar, and sacrificed a Samoan girl--though no one ever knew
quite why: for there the tradition ends."
I felt again that there was a hidden meaning in her words; but Roscoe
remained perfectly still.
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