She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again.
"Where should you begin ?" she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham.
He laughed shortly.
"That is American enough," he said.

"Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them.

I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Where should you begin ?'" "That is one way of beginning," said Bettina.

"In fact, it is the only way." He did not tell her that he liked that, but he knew that he did like it and that her mere words touched him like a spur.

It was, of course, her lifelong breathing of the atmosphere of millions which made for this fashion of moving at once in the direction of obstacles presenting to the rest of the world barriers seemingly insurmountable.