“Is it really as bad as that?” she asked sympathetically.
“Worse,” he rejoined. “I believe that my father has finally made up his mind that there is no chance of saving the place.”
She was thoughtful for several moments, affected even perhaps more than she realised by the note of dejection in his tone. His enterprise, which had presented itself before to her imagination as a sort of buccaneering feat, not exactly reprehensible but faintly tinged with sordidness, suddenly showed itself in a new light. She realised alike the chivalry of it and the pathos, and how near he had been to success.
“Unless, after all, you discover the jewels,” she observed, a little abruptly.
“I am afraid there isn’t much chance of that,” he sighed. “Somehow, over here it seems absurd to take these superstitions seriously, but I can’t get away from the feeling that if the jewels are in existence they will never be discovered so long as the Images are separated.”
She leaned a little towards him.
“The jewels do exist,” she assured him softly.
A touch of the old frenzied earnestness came back to him. His eyes glistened, not altogether with cupidity, but with the adventurer’s pride in success.
“How do you know that?” he demanded.
She hesitated for a few moments. Yet, after all, why should there be any secrecy? The adventure, such as it had been, was finished. Here in this quiet backwater of life there seemed something grotesque about it all. Nevertheless she spoke uneasily, almost reluctantly.