The woman fingered at her gloves, turning them back about the wrists. Her face was anxious and drawn.
“I am rather desperately in need of money,” she said.
The cynicism deepened in the man's face.
“Unfortunately,” he replied, “a supply of money cannot be influenced by the intensity of one's necessity for it.”
He was a man indefinite in age. His oily black hair was brushed carefully back. His clothes were excellent, with a precise detail. Everything about him was conspicuously correct in the English fashion. But the man was not English. One could not say from what race he came. Among the races of Southern Europe he could hardly have been distinguished. There was a chameleon quality strongly dominant in the creature.
The woman looked up quickly, as in a strong aversion.
“What shall you do?” she said.
“I?”
The man glanced about the room. There was a certain display within the sweep of his vision. Some rugs of great value, vases and bronzes; genuine and of extreme age. He made a careless gesture with his hands.
“I shall explore some ruins in Syria, and perhaps the aqueduct which the French think carried a water supply to the Carthage of Hanno. It will be convenient to be beyond British inquiry for some years to come; and after all, I am an antiquarian, like Prosper Merimee.”