Anderson took it quietly.  The Chief Justice smiled.

“It might have been,” he said, “it might have been!  This railroad has made the difference.”  He stretched out his hand towards the line and the pass.  “Twenty years ago, I came over this ground with the first party that ever pushed through Rogers Pass and down the Illecillewaet Valley to the Pacific.  We camped just about here for the night.  And in the evening I was sitting by myself on the slopes of that mountain opposite”—­he raised his hand—­“looking at the railway camps below me, and the first rough line that had been cut through the forests.  And I thought of the day when the trains would be going backwards and forwards, and these nameless valleys and peaks would become the playground of Canada and America.  But what I didn’t see was the shade of England looking on!—­England, whose greater destiny was being decided by those gangs of workmen below me, and the thousands of workmen behind me, busy night and day in bridging the gap between east and west.  Traffic from north and south”—­he turned towards the American—­“that meant, for your Northwest, fusion with our Northwest; traffic from east to west—­that meant England, and the English Sisterhood of States!  And that, for the moment, I didn’t see.”

“Shall I quote you something I found in an Edmonton paper the other day?” said Anderson, raising his head from where he lay, looking down into the grass.  And with his smiling, intent gaze fixed on the American, he recited: 

Land of the sweeping eagle, your goal is not our goal! 
For the ages have taught that the North and the South breed
difference of soul. 
We toiled for years in the snow and the night, because we
believed in the spring,
And the mother who cheered us first, shall be first at the
banquetting! 
The grey old mother, the dear old mother, who taught us the
note we sing!

The American laughed.

“A bit raw, like some of your prairie towns; but it hits the nail.  I dare say we have missed our bargain.  What matter!  Our own chunk is as big as we can chew.”

There was a moment’s silence.  Elizabeth’s eyes were shining; even Philip sat open-mouthed and dumb, staring at Anderson.

In the background Delaine waited, grudgingly expectant, for the turn of Elizabeth’s head, and the spark of consciousness passing between the two faces which he had learnt to watch.  It came—­a flash of some high sympathy—­involuntary, lasting but a moment.  Then Mariette threw out: 

“And in the end, what are you going to make of it?  A replica of Europe, or America?—­a money-grubbing civilisation with no faith but the dollar?  If so, we shall have had the great chance of history—­and lost it!”

“We shan’t lose it,” said Anderson, “unless the gods mock us.”

“Why not?” said Mariette sombrely.  “Nations have gone mad before now.”

“Ah!—­prophesy, prophesy!” said the Chief Justice sadly.  “All very well for you young men, but for us, who are passing away!  Here we are at the birth.  Shall we never, in any state of being, know the end?  I have never felt so bitterly as I do now the limitations of our knowledge and our life.”