‘But, madame’—Quality’s voice was vibrant with horror—‘how can you call it equal? It is inconceivable that a woman, with a woman’s heart beating within her breast, should sell a life merely for money!’
‘Ah, m’sieur!’—Madame laughed mirthlessly—‘it is easy to see that all your life you have had more than enough. For the others, though—What will they not do for gold?’
She proceeded to answer her own question by illustration.
‘My young brother killed the farmer that he worked for, the farmer’s wife, four children, and a farm-hand—all for the sake of the gold that was in the house. Alone he did it, with a hatchet—and he but a child of fifteen! Such a good lad, and regular with his Mass. It was merely the gold that maddened him, and yet they imprisoned him—le pauvre!’
At last Quality had heard the thrill of emotion in her voice. Looking up, he detected a bead of moisture in her eyes. The sight of her sorrow only added to the horror. On top of her calm recital of the crime, such sympathy for the juvenile monster was nauseating.
‘Your young brother must be a unique specimen,’ he said stiffly, speaking with an effort.
‘Not at all. Like all the rest of us. Like you, perhaps. Certainly, like me!’
A pleasant family history. To steady his nerves, Quality fingered his papers feverishly, repeating the while his magic formula: ‘To-morrow, I go home.’
Even as his lips silently framed the words, he started back, blinking his eyes, and momentarily stunned and deafened. For it seemed to him that a lighted express had shot, shrieking, through the room, like a rocket—thundering past him in a long golden streak.
It was only a fresh manifestation of infamous buffoonery on the part of his nerves, yet it left Quality utterly shaken. He felt suddenly stranded and abandoned. All his vague fears and doubts of the past days sharpened into a definite pang of fear.