“I mean I love you so exclusively that I wish I had a thousand times more to sacrifice.”
“But—but—there are always Americans travelling—and you know many Europeans——”
“They are always easy to avoid. There are villas with walls, and pink flowers on top of the walls. And we could travel and see the wonders of art when the tourist season was over. Nor would I monopolise you. You could have the society of men of brains and achievement everywhere.”
He continued to stare at her radiant wistful face. He had known that she loved him, but it had never occurred to him that she would be willing to give up the world for his sake. She was a proud woman, an aristocrat, she had an exceptional position everywhere; the great world when they parted stood ready to offer its consolations.
She had unrolled a heavenly vision! His mind had revolted from debasing her to the status of what is euphemistically known in the West as “sporting women”; he also remembered the immediate disillusionments of his younger manhood and wondered if the hideousness of Butte had been responsible. The Mediterranean with its ancient civilisations flourishing and forgotten before the historic period, Egypt, full-grown offspring of a still more ancient but vanished civilisation—both called to that archæological instinct so closely allied to the geological, made him fancy he heard faint ancestral voices. Ora’s eyes were holding his, and her gaze was as powerful as his own. For the moment he no longer was a son of the newest section of the newest world. The turquoise waters of the Mediterranean spread before him, but he saw it alive with galleys——
He jerked his eyes away, folded his arms and stared downward. He must think rationally, not with vapours in his brain. It might be that he would be more than fool to sacrifice to any consideration the one chance for happiness in perfect union that life would offer him.
Suddenly he became aware that he was staring at the rocky floor of his mine, of its first level; the flickering candle flames revealed bits of bright yellow metal. And below was the second level with its superb shoot of copper ore ten feet wide. And below, on the third level, still was the vein far more beautiful than virgin gold. And down—down—in those vast unlocked caverns—what mysteries—what wonder-ores might not the earth harbour for him alone to find and name——
“What are you thinking of?” cried Ora sharply. Then she threw out her arms wildly. “I know! I know! It is those accursed ores! Oh, God! What have I in me, I, a mere woman, to compensate for the loss of a mine? I was a fool—Of course! Of course!”
But Gregory, although his blood had frozen in his veins at the horrid vision of a permanent divorce from his mine, would make no such admission.
“Ora,” he said quietly, “it would be very wonderful—for about three months. You would despise me if I were content to dawdle away my life in an olive grove, or throw away my best years and these great energies nature has given me, doing nothing in that old civilisation in which I could find no place. And in time you would resent the weakness that had stranded you with no recourse in life but myself. That sort of thing has never been a success and never will be, because nature did not make man to live on love alone, and it is much the same with the intellectual woman. It wouldn’t work. Not with us. I have known from the beginning that it must be marriage or nothing. And Ida would not divorce me if I ran away with you. She would be entitled to her revenge and she would take it.” He leaned forward and signalled the station call. “Please take the skip when it comes. I am going below.” And he ran down the ladder.