"It's romantic when we've emotionalized it, when we've _felt_ it, when it's hit home with us, as it were!" "If it doesn't hit too hard!" qualified the older man.
"For instance," maintained the young Chicagoan, once more proffering his cigarette-case to Durkin, "for instance, take that big Mercedes touring-car with the canopy top, coming down through the crowd there.
You'll agree, at first sight, that such things mean good-bye to the mounted knight, to chivalry, and all that romantic old horseman business." "I suppose so." "But, don't you see, the horse and armor was only a frame, an accidental setting, for the romance itself! It's up to date and practical and sordid and commonplace, you'd say, that puffing thing with a gasoline engine hidden away in its bowels.

It's what we call machinery.

But, supposing, now, instead of holding Monsieur le Duc Somebody, or Milord So-and-So, or Signor Comte Somebody-Else, with his wife or his mistress--I say, supposing it held--well, my young sister Alice, whom I left so sedately contented at Brighton! Supposing it held my young sister, running away with an Indian rajah!" "And you would call that romance ?" "Exactly!" Durkin turned and looked at the approaching car.
"While, as a matter of fact," he continued, with his exasperatingly smooth smile, "it seems to be holding a very much overdressed young lady, presumably from the Folies-Bergere or the Olympia." The younger man, looking back from his place beside him, turned to listen, confronted by the sudden excited comments of a middle-aged woman, obviously Parisian, on the arm of a lean and solemn man with dyed and waxed mustachios.
"You're quite wrong," cried the young Chicagoan, excitedly.

"It's young Lady Boxspur--the new English beauty.

See, they're crowding out to get a glimpse of her!" "Who's Lady Boxspur ?" asked Durkin, hanging stolidly back.