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The
allusion was not to the point. Don Jose was a dear good man, who talked
very well, and was enthusiastic about the greatness of the San Tome
mine. "How can you compare them, Charles?" she exclaimed, reproachfully.
"He has suffered--and yet he hopes."

The working competence of men--which she never questioned--was very
surprising to Mrs. Gould, because upon so many obvious issues they
showed themselves strangely muddle-headed.

Charles Gould, with a careworn calmness which secured for him at once
his wife's anxious sympathy, assured her that he was not comparing. He
was an American himself, after all, and perhaps he could understand both
kinds of eloquence--"if it were worth while to try," he added, grimly.
But he had breathed the air of England longer than any of his people had
done for three generations, and really he begged to be excused. His
poor father could be eloquent, too. And he asked his wife whether she
remembered a passage in one of his father's last letters where Mr.
Gould had expressed the conviction that "God looked wrathfully at these
countries, or else He would let some ray of hope fall through a rift in
the appalling darkness of intrigue, bloodshed, and crime that hung over
the Queen of Continents."

Mrs. Gould had not forgotten. "You read it to me, Charley," she
murmured. "It was a striking pronouncement. How deeply your father must
have felt its terrible sadness!"

"He did not like to be robbed. It exasperated him," said Charles Gould.
"But the image will serve well enough. What is wanted here is law, good
faith, order, security. Any one can declaim about these things, but I
pin my faith to material interests. Only let the material interests once
get a firm footing, and they are bound to impose the conditions on
which alone they can continue to exist. That's how your money-making is
justified here in the face of lawlessness and disorder. It is justified
because the security which it demands must be shared with an oppressed
people. A better justice will come afterwards. That's your ray of hope."
His arm pressed her slight form closer to his side for a moment. "And
who knows whether in that sense even the San Tome mine may not become
that little rift in the darkness which poor father despaired of ever
seeing?"

She glanced up at him with admiration. He was competent; he had given a
vast shape to the vagueness of her unselfish ambitions.

"Charley," she said, "you are splendidly disobedient."

He left her suddenly in the corredor to go and get his hat, a soft, grey
sombrero, an article of national costume which combined unexpectedly
well with his English get-up. He came back, a riding-whip under his arm,
buttoning up a dogskin glove; his face reflected the resolute nature of
his thoughts. His wife had waited for him at the head of the stairs, and
before he gave her the parting kiss he finished the conversation--

"What should be perfectly clear to us," he said, "is the fact that there
is no going back.

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