“I did think of it,” he admitted; “but there seemed to be no hurry. All these things are growing into money year by year. Some day I shall send everything to Christie’s.”
She looked at him in horror.
“You cannot—oh, you cannot mean it?” she cried.
“Why not? They are no use to me.”
“No use?” she faltered.
“Not a bit. I don’t suppose I shall see them again for many years. And the money—well, one can use that.”
“But I thought—that you were rich?” she faltered.
“So I am,” he answered, “and yet I go on making more and more, and I shall go on. Money is the whip with which its possessor can scourge humanity. It is with money that I deal out my—forgive me, I forgot that I was talking aloud, and to a child,” he wound up suddenly.
She looked at him, dry-eyed, but with a strained look of sorrow strangely altering her girlish face.
“You must be very unhappy,” she said.