Gilead Beck proceeded with his soliloquy:
"I've had a real high time for three months; the best three months of my life. Whatever happens more can't touch the memory of the last three months. I've met English ladies and made friends of English gentlemen. There's Amer'can ladies and Amer'can gentlemen, but I can't speak of them, because I never went into their society You don't find ladies and gentlemen in Empire City. And in all the trades I've turned my attention to, from school-keepin' to editing, there's not been one where Amer'can ladies cared to show their hand. That means that the Stars and Stripes may be as good as the Union Jack—come to know them."
He stopped and pulled himself together with a laugh.
"I can't make it out,—somehow. Seems as if I'm in a dream. Is it real? Is the story of the Golden Butterfly a true story, or is it made up out of some man's brain?"
"It is real, Mr. Beck," said Phillis, softly putting her hand in his. "It is real. No one could have invented such a story. See, dear Mr. Beck, you that we all love so much, there is you in it, and I am in it—and—and the Twins. Why, if people saw us all in a book they would say it was impossible. I am the only girl in all the civilised world who can neither read nor write—and Jack doesn't mind it—and you are the only man who ever found the Golden Butterfly. Indeed it is all real."
"It is all real, Beck," Jack echoed. "You have had the high time, and sorry indeed we are that it is over. But perhaps it is not all over. Surely something out of the two million dollars must have remained."
Mr. Beck pointed sorrowfully to the three pieces which were the fragments of the Butterfly.
"Nothing is left," he said. "Nothing except the solid gold that made his cage. And that will go to pay the hotel-bill."
Mrs. L'Estrange looked on in silence. What was this quiet lady, this woman of even and uneventful life, to say in the presence of such misfortune?
Ladds held out his hand.