"Well?" she said impatiently. "Can't you speak?"
"I'll try," he answered. "Winkleheim Reef Explorations went down to four and six pence to-day, and as there's 5 shillings a share not paid up, it's very probable that one wouldn't be able to give the stock away before the market closes to-morrow."
"Ah," replied Millicent sharply, "didn't you tell me that they were worth sixteen shillings not very long ago? Why didn't you sell them then?"
"Because, as it seems to me now, my greediness was greater than my judgment. I wanted twenty shillings, and I thought I saw how I could get it." He paused with a little jarring laugh. "As a matter of fact—strange as it may seem—I believed in the thing. That is why I let them send out their independent expert, and held on when the stock began to drop. At the worst, I'd good reasons for believing Walmer would let me see the cipher report in time to sell. As it happened, he and the other traitor sold their own stock instead and that must have started the panic. Now they've got their report. There's no ore that will pay for milling in the reef."
It was not all clear to Millicent, but she understood from his manner that her husband was ruined. "Then what are we to do?" she asked. "Is there nobody who will give you a start again? You must be known in the business."
"That is the precise trouble. I'm too well known. So long as a man is a winner at this particular game and can make it worth while for interested folks to applaud him, or, at least, to keep their mouths shut, he can find a field for his talents when he wants it, but once he makes a false move or comes down with a bang, they get their claws in him and keep him from getting up again. Nobody has any sympathy with a broken company exploiter, especially when he has for once been crazy enough to believe in his own venture."
Leslie found it a small relief to run on with ironical bitterness, but Millicent, who was severely practical in some respects, checked him.
"You haven't answered my other question."
"Then I won't keep you waiting. In a few weeks we'll go out to the Pacific Slope of North America. I may save enough from the wreck to start me in the land-agency business somewhere in British Columbia."
Millicent turned from him, and gazed down the moon-lit valley. Troubled as she was, its rugged beauty and its stillness appealed to her, and she knew it would be a wrench to leave the land which had hitherto safely sheltered her. She had known only the smoother side of life in it, and nobody could appreciate the ease and luxury it could offer some of its inhabitants better than she did. Now, it seemed, she must leave it, and go out to struggle for a mere living in some unlovely town in what she supposed must be a wild and semi-barbarous country. She felt bitter against the man who, as she thought of it, had dragged her down, but she hid her resentment.