“Maybe you will,” conceded Marsh.

The two elder looked on, idly amused at this give-and-take.

“And I don’t suppose,” continued Marise, “to take another instance of modern lack of imagination, that you have ever noticed, as an element of picturesque power in modern life, the splendid puissance of the traffic cop’s presence in a city street.”

They all had a protesting laugh at this, startled for an instant from their dreaminess.

“Yes, and if I could think of more grandiloquent words to express him, I’d use them,” said Marise defiantly, launching out into yet more outrageous flights of rhetoric.  “I could stand for hours on a street corner, admiring the completeness with which he is transfigured out of the human limitations of his mere personality, how he feels, flaming through his every vein and artery, the invincible power of THE LAW, freely set over themselves by all those turbulent, unruly human beings, surging around him in their fiery speed-genii.  He raises his arm.  It is not a human arm, it is the decree of the entire race.  And as far as it can be seen, all those wilful fierce creatures bow themselves to it.  The current boils past him in one direction.  He lets it go till he thinks fit to stop it.  He sounds his whistle, and raises his arm again in that inimitable gesture of omnipotence.  And again they bow themselves.  Now that the priest before the altar no longer sways humanity as he did, is there anywhere else, any other such visible embodiment of might, majesty, and power as . . .”

“Gracious me, Marise!” warned her old cousin.  “I know you’re only running on with your foolishness, but I think you’re going pretty far when you mix a policeman up with priests and altars and things.  I don’t believe Mr. Bayweather would like that very well.”

“He wouldn’t mind,” demurred Marise.  “He’d think it an interesting historical parallel.”

“Mrs. Bayweather would have a thing or two to say.”

“Right you are. Mrs. Bayweather would certainly say something!” agreed Marise.

She stood up.  “I’m hypnotized into perfect good-for-nothingness like the rest of you by the loveliness of the afternoon and the niceness of everybody.  Here it is almost eating-time and I haven’t even opened the baskets.  No, don’t you move,” she commanded the others, beginning to stir from their nirvana to make dutiful offers of help.  “I’ll call the children.  And Neale will be here in a moment.”

* * * * *

She went back to the house, down the long walk, under the grape-arbor, still only faintly shaded with sprigs of pale green.  She was calling, “Children! Children! Come and help with the supper.”

She vanished into the house.  There was a moment or two of intense quiet, in which the almost horizontal rays of the setting sun poured a flood of palpable gold on the three motionless figures in the garden.