"Then, go on, please. I never meant that we should give up the last chance because it was unpleasant, or unsafe. Theo—she has just tasted her girlhood, just commenced to live; how can we let her lose it all? I would rather smudge my fingers in saving her than wear the bar sinister of cowardice. There are laws I know you will not break, because, being yourself, you can not. Go on, and tell me what Desmond said."
A white moth, hunting some star across the dark, dashed itself against Allard's coat and hung quivering there. He paused to disentangle the delicate wings before replying, the careful seriousness of the little action in itself a characterization.
"There has been shown to me a way to make enough money to thrust poverty out of sight for the present and find comfort for the future. A way to save Sun-Kist in the short time left us to command. But it is by a crime, a crime which the world calls as ugly as forgery. You know for what Desmond was punished. Yet it is in a certain sense the crime magnificent, in that one wrongs a government instead of an individual, and dashes the gauntlet into the face of the state itself. It is the crime that to the least degree smudges, because, after all, it offers a fair equivalent for value received."
"What do you mean?"
"The old mine is no longer worth operating; but there is silver in small quantities," Allard replied quietly. "Enough for Desmond's use. Naturally, he never dreamed of making such a proposition to me. He simply told me how the affair could be carried out, as he told me a dozen other amazing possibilities and reminiscences. I encouraged him to talk, at first merely to dull the clamor of thought at my inner ear. In the end, I kept him near here."
"It's so real, John?"
"It's so real and so possible. I have satisfied myself of that. Either of us could carry the plan through, with Desmond; but we must realize that the one who undertakes it steps out of this life. For, facing the fact, disaster in the end is almost certain. The government machinery is very perfect; he who breaks the law can scarcely hope to escape arrest sooner or later. And if that happens, our world must never guess. Whoever accepts the work must leave here for an indefinite journey abroad, ostensibly; and in reality lose his identity absolutely somewhere. The one who goes must endure in silence whatever happens; the one who stays—"
"Go on."
"The one who stays," John finished gently, "must not interfere or try to save."
Robert shuddered slightly and sat still for an instant.