“But don’t you want them?” she persisted. “Wouldn’t that be very wonderful?”
He looked up through the boughs of the tree; a worn, tired-looking man, over whose high cheek bones the skin seemed tightly drawn. In ordinary European costume he appeared somehow to have shrunken, to have lost flesh and a certain amount of presence.
“It is nothing,” he said. “Since I arrived in England it has cost me many a weary hour to invest my money. Yesterday I heard from the accountants who are winding up the affairs of Johnson and Company, and it seems that there are still great sums to come.”
“All made in that strange warehouse!” she exclaimed.
“There and in Alexandria,” he replied. “I went out to China, Claire, as your father may have told you, giving up a Chair worth eight hundred a year at Oxford, and owning, perhaps, a couple of thousand pounds. I became sort of unofficial adviser to Johnson and Company simply because there were things about China which no other European knew. I was very useful to them without a doubt, and in the end they made me a partner. Now that we are winding up the business, it seems that my share is worth something between three and four hundred thousand pounds.”
“Amazing!” the girl gasped.
“Here,” he continued, “in these few sentences may lie another fortune. I am an old man, and I ask myself what good could it do to me to place those secret jewels in the markets of the world, to hang them round the necks and the shoulders of American millionairesses and the world’s courtesanes? We cannot breathe sweeter air than this, or more delicious perfumes. We cannot look upon fairer scenes. We could not eat more, drink more or sleep more. For your clothes and such pleasures as you may care to indulge in you have already carte blanche. You are not one of those who will need money to buy herself a husband. So tell me, child, what could we do with more money?”
“I can think of nothing,” she acknowledged.
“Then, for the moment, at any rate, we will let the fortune remain where it is,” he decided, “and keep our fingers unstained from sacrilege. Is this a fairy prince, Claire, or a very handsome young man in grey tweeds?”
She drew a little, fluttering breath. Her fingers closed over his.