“This is no doubt what I saw entering by Broken Tree with you,” she said, “but now it is so close upon us my opinion is no better than another woman’s, nor so good, I think. I see trouble coming from afar and declare it, but if I forget what I have declared, I fall into it myself.”
I looked for Herman then and found him at Lower Fern.
“So,” I said, “you are determined to go on with this?”
“What else?” He looked surprised, and then reproachful. “If you would stop to think, Mona, what it might mean to me, to all of us, to take back to our world, where as yet we have only theorized about it, news of a social order already accomplished where every man’s greatest benefit is the common good——”
“No,” I said, “I haven’t. What I’m thinking about is what we would bring to the Outliers.”
“Of course, if you look at it that way——”
“And there is something you ought to think of, and that is if you promise to buy land and protection for them, whether you have the price. You haven’t really seen the Treasure, you know.”
“But—but—Mona,” he expostulated, “it’s all been so real. I never thought—that ceremony—the Ward and all—of course I haven’t seen it——”
“It may be pebbles,” I said, “or colored glass.”
“But I thought you believed in it? You were the very first to believe it.”