“You see, these are not like the stones which are found in our diamond-fields,” he said. “Those, most likely, were little, unconsumed bits of the original mass, afterwards gradually forced up from the interior in the same way that many metals and minerals are forced up, and then rounded and dulled by countless ages of grinding and abrasion, due to the action of rocks or water.”
“Roland,” she cried, excitedly, “this is riches beyond imagination! What is common wealth to what you have discovered? Every living being on earth could—”
“Ah, Margaret,” he interrupted, “do not let your thoughts run that way. If my discovery should be put to the use of which you are thinking, it would bring poverty, not wealth, to the world, and not a diamond on earth would be worth more than a common pebble. Everywhere, in civilized countries and in barbaric palaces, people would see their riches vanish before them as if it had been blighted by the touch of an evil magician.”
She trembled. “And these—are they to be valued as common pebbles?”
“Oh no,” said he; “so long as that great shaft is mine, these broken fragments are to us riches far ahead of our wildest imaginations.”
“Roland,” she cried, “are you going down into that shaft for more of them?”
“Never, never, never again,” he said. “What we have here is enough for us, and if I were offered all the good that there is in this world, which money cannot buy, I would never go down into that cleft again. There was one moment when I stood in that cave in which an awful terror shot into my soul which I shall never be able to forget. In the light of my electric lamps, sent through a vast transparent mass, I could see nothing, but I could feel. I put out my foot and I found it was upon a sloping surface. In another instant I might have slid—where? I cannot bear to think of it!”
She threw her arms around him and held him tightly.