"Do you imagine I could ever be satisfied not knowing?" said Bunny.
Saltash shrugged his shoulders. "I merely suggested that you are going the wrong way to satisfy yourself. But that is your affair, not mine. The gods have sent you a gift, and because you don't know what it is made of, you are going to pull it to pieces to find out. And presently you will fling it away because you cannot fit it together again. You don't realize—you never will realize—that the best things in life are the things we never see and only dimly understand."
A vein of sincerity mingled with the banter in his voice, and Bunny was aware of a curious quality of reverence, of something sacred in a waste place.
It affected him oddly. Convinced though he was that in one point at least
Saltash had sought to deceive him it yet influenced him very strongly in
Saltash's favour. Against his judgment, against his will even, he saw him
as a friend.
"Do you mean to tell me," he said, speaking slowly, his eyes upon the swarthy, baffling countenance, "that you have never even tried to know where she came from—what she is?"
Saltash made a quick gesture as of remonstrance. "Mon ami, the last I have always known. The first I have never needed to know."
"Then," Bunny spoke with difficulty, but his look never wavered, "tell me—as before God—tell me what you believe her to be!"
"What I know her to be," corrected Saltash, "I will tell you—certainly.
She is a child who has looked into hell, but she is still—a child."
"What do you mean?" questioned Bunny.
Saltash's eyes, one black, one grey, suddenly flashed a direct challenge into his own. "I mean," he said, "that the flame has scorched her, but it has never actually touched her."