"Barring my pay," he said, ruefully, "I haven't a coin in the world." And for the moment, newly accepted lover as he was, his eyes actually left hers and wandered away to the reddening yellow of the sunset with a certain resentment at the limitations of his world.
"Father has plenty!" she put in joyously. And for the moment her hand actually touched his in a new-born sense of appropriation and right of re-assurance which made her blush faintly. It also made his eyes return to hers, whereat she blushed furiously, and then tried to cover her confusion by a jest. "Well! he has. Hasn't he the best collection of coins in India?"
"He wouldn't part with one of them, though, for love or money. And I doubt his parting with you--though I could pay a lot--in love."
He had both her hands now, and the very newness of the position made her fence with the emotion it aroused.
"He parted with duplicates."
"But you aren't one--there isn't anyone like you in the wide, wide world. And I'm glad you're not. I don't want anyone else to be as lucky as I am."
She retreated still further from realities into jesting. "Then he exchanges quite often, so, if you only set yourself to find something----" She broke off, and her face lit up. "Oh, Jim! I have such a delightful idea! You shall find the gold coin--you know the one I mean--with the date that is to settle, or unsettle, half the history of the world! Do you know, I really believe, if you helped him to confound all those German wiseacres, that father would be quite willing to exchange----"
"His daughter for the ducat! Perhaps. But, unfortunately--and quite between ourselves--I have my doubts about the existence of that coin. Or if it does exist it is hopelessly hidden away for ever and ever and aye, like that blessed old buried city of his that we have all been hunting after this month past in the wilderness. I don't wish to be disrespectful to your father, Queenie, but I believe he dreamt of it--that is to say, if it didn't dream of him--one never knows which comes first----"
He paused, arrested in the egoism, the absolute individualism of love by the mystery of the collective life which was part even of that love, and once more his eyes wandered to the sun setting.
The sky had darkened on the horizon as the dust haze shadowed into purple, so that the distant edge of the low sand-hills, losing definite outline, seemed almost level. Yet far and near, from the feet of the lovers as they sat close together to that uncertain ending of their visible world, not a straight line was to be seen. Everything showed in curves--curves that told their unflinching tale of unseen circlings. The wrinkled ripples left by the last wind upon the sea of sand around them waved over the endless undulations of the desert, the sparse tussocks of coarse grass fell in fountains from their own centres, the stunted thorn-bushes were coiled and twisted on themselves like tangled skeins without a clue, the faint tracks of the sand-rats and the partridges wound snake-like in every direction, and even the footprints which had brought the two lovers in their present resting-place held the same hint of reference to unseen continuity, for, absorbed in Love's new world, they had wandered on aimlessly unheeding of the old one at their feet.