"You're right, François, it still exists and a hundred times more beautiful and dazzling than before. Science does not kill miracles: it purifies them and ennobles them. What was that crafty, capricious, wicked, incomprehensible little power attached to the tip of a magic wand and acting at random, according to the ignorant fancy of a barbarian chief or Druid, what was it, I ask you, beside the beneficent, logical, reliable and quite as miraculous power which we behold to-day in a pinch of radium?"
Don Luis suddenly interrupted himself and began to laugh:
"Come, come, I'm allowing myself to be carried away and singing an ode to science! Forgive me, madame," he added, rising and going up to Véronique, "and tell me that I have not bored you too much with my explanations. I haven't, have I? Not too much? Besides, it's finished . . . or nearly finished. There is only one more point to make clear, one decision to take."
He sat down beside her:
"It's this. Now that we have won the God-Stone, in other words, an actual treasure, what are we going to do with it?"
Véronique spoke with a heartfelt impulse:
"Oh, as to that, don't let us speak of it! I don't want anything that may come from Sarek, or anything that's found in the Priory. We will work."
"Still, the Priory belongs to you."
"No, no, Véronique d'Hergemont no longer exists and the Priory no longer belongs to any one. Let it all be put up to auction. I don't want anything of that accursed past."
"And how will you live?"