"I felt—I feel—so about things in general," Anthony admitted. "It was my romantic side you appealed to—"
"Have you a better side?"
"No better, but more practical. This isn't 'things in general.' It's a thing particular, personal, and definite. If we should be quixotic enough not to take what we've earned the right to take, we should be called fools. Instead of claiming our half, the Egyptian government would get all—"
"Let it!" Monny cried. "A government is a big, cold, soulless —impersonality! It never could know the thrill that's in our blood this wonderful minute—or miss the thrill if it were destroyed. Do you mind being called a fool, Anthony—and you, Lord Ernest?"
Anthony was silent; but something made me speak. "I don't mind. You know, I've always been a Duffer."
"Our future largely depends on this," Fenton persisted, with a conscientious wish to persuade us—and himself.
"I believe it does!" Monny strangely agreed with him.
"What do you mean?" Anthony's voice was suddenly sharp with some emotion; which sounded more like anxiety than anger. "Do you mean, that if Ernest Borrow and I insist on our rights to whatever treasure is hidden here, you and Mrs. O'Brien will think less of us?"
"Not less. Nothing you could do would make us think less, after all that has happened to us, together. But—could it ever be as it has been—as beautiful, as sweet, with all the dearest kind of romance in our thoughts of you? You see, you have the glory of finding the secret. Queen Candace saved it for you. She wouldn't give it to such a man as Colonel Corkran. She knew he wouldn't respect her. Maybe she hoped you would. I seem to hear her saying so. All this gold, and the treasure we haven't seen, is hers. It's been hers for more than two thousand years. Why should we steal it? We aren't a horrid, cold Government. It won't be our fault, whatever a Government may choose to do. She'll know that, and so shall we. Besides, we can beg to have the tomb kept like this for the great shrine of Meröe. Our memory of this place can't have the glamour torn away whatever happens. Nothing sordid will come between it and us, as it would if—why, after all, where's the great difference between opening the coffin of a woman dead thousands of years ago, or a few months? Supposing people wanted to dig up Queen Elizabeth, to see what had been buried with her? Or Napoleon? What an outcry there'd be all over the world. This poor queen is defenceless, because her civilization is dead, too. Could you force open the lid of her coffin, Lord Ernest, and take the jewels off her neck?"
"Just now, I feel as if I couldn't," I confessed humbly.