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"What a mistake that is!" cried Innocent Smith,
leaping up in great excitement. "All is gold that glitters--
especially now we are a Sovereign State. What's the good
of a Sovereign State if you can't define a sovereign?
We can make anything a precious metal, as men could in the morning
of the world. They didn't choose gold because it was rare;
your scientists can tell you twenty sorts of slime much rarer.
They chose gold because it was bright--because it was
a hard thing to find, but pretty when you've found it.
You can't fight with golden swords or eat golden biscuits;
you can only look at it--an you can look at it out here."
With one of his incalculable motions he sprang back and burst open
the doors into the garden. At the same time also, with one of his
gestures that never seemed at the instant so unconventional as they were,
he stretched out his hand to Mary Gray, and led her out on to the lawn
as if for a dance.
The French windows, thus flung open, let in an evening even lovelier than that
of the day before. The west was swimming with sanguine colours, and a sort
of sleepy flame lay along the lawn. The twisted shadows of the one or two
garden trees showed upon this sheen, not gray or black, as in common daylight,
but like arabesques written in vivid violet ink on some page of Eastern gold.
The sunset was one of those festive and yet mysterious conflagrations in
which common things by their colours remind us of costly or curious things.
The slates upon the sloping roof burned like the plumes of a vast peacock,
in every mysterious blend of blue and green. The red-brown bricks of
the wall glowed with all the October tints of strong ruby and tawny wines.
The sun seemed to set each object alight with a different coloured flame,
like a man lighting fireworks; and even Innocent's hair, which was of a rather
colourless fairness, seemed to have a flame of pagan gold on it as he strode
across the lawn towards the one tall ridge of rockery.
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