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mine."

In such words he talked to her because his memory was very full of the
country of his childhood, his heart of his life with that girl, and his
mind of the San Tome Concession. He added that he would have to leave
her for a few days to find an American, a man from San Francisco, who
was still somewhere in Europe. A few months before he had made his
acquaintance in an old historic German town, situated in a mining
district. The American had his womankind with him, but seemed lonely
while they were sketching all day long the old doorways and the
turreted corners of the mediaeval houses. Charles Gould had with him the
inseparable companionship of the mine. The other man was interested in
mining enterprises, knew something of Costaguana, and was no stranger to
the name of Gould. They had talked together with some intimacy which
was made possible by the difference of their ages. Charles wanted now
to find that capitalist of shrewd mind and accessible character. His
father's fortune in Costaguana, which he had supposed to be still
considerable, seemed to have melted in the rascally crucible of
revolutions. Apart from some ten thousand pounds deposited in England,
there appeared to be nothing left except the house in Sulaco, a vague
right of forest exploitation in a remote and savage district, and the
San Tome Concession, which had attended his poor father to the very
brink of the grave.

He explained those things. It was late when they parted. She had never
before given him such a fascinating vision of herself. All the eagerness
of youth for a strange life, for great distances, for a future in which
there was an air of adventure, of combat--a subtle thought of redress
and conquest, had filled her with an intense excitement, which she
returned to the giver with a more open and exquisite display of
tenderness.

He left her to walk down the hill, and directly he found himself alone
he became sober. That irreparable change a death makes in the course
of our daily thoughts can be felt in a vague and poignant discomfort
of mind. It hurt Charles Gould to feel that never more, by no effort of
will, would he be able to think of his father in the same way he used
to think of him when the poor man was alive. His breathing image was
no longer in his power. This consideration, closely affecting his own
identity, filled his breast with a mournful and angry desire for action.
In this his instinct was unerring. Action is consolatory. It is the
enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the
conduct of our action can we find the sense of mastery over the Fates.
For his action, the mine was obviously the only field. It was imperative
sometimes to know how to disobey the solemn wishes of the dead.
He resolved firmly to make his disobedience as thorough (by way of
atonement) as it well could be. The mine had been the cause of an absurd
moral disaster; its working must be made a serious and moral success.
He owed it to the dead man's memory.

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