"I hope that you are right," she said, slowly, at last. And then, with
a queer little laugh which jarred upon Conniston strangely: "I am
getting fanciful, I suppose, and faint-hearted! Never has our
undertaking seemed so big to me; never have the obstacles loomed so
high. I find myself waking up with a start night after night from some
horrible dream that the water has failed in the mountains, or that
Oliver Swinnerton has stolen all of our men, or that Bat Truxton has
gone over to the opposition! Oh, I know that I am foolish. For, as you
say, we _can't_ fail. Everything has got to come out right! And now,"
in the manner native and natural to her--frank, hearty, even eager--"I
am going to tell you some good news. In the first place, I see that I
have been doing nothing too long, and that always makes one morbid, I
think. I am going to get back to work. Isn't that good news? It is to
me, at least. And, secondly, I have made a discovery. You'd never
guess."
Conniston shook his head. "What is it?"
"What," she asked him, laughingly, and yet with a serious note in her
voice, "is the one thing which we should like to discover here? If a
good old-style genie straight from between the covers of the _Arabian
Nights_ were to drop down in front of you and say, 'Name the thing
which thou wouldst have, and thou shalt have it!' what would that
thing be?"
And Conniston, with his thoughts upon the Great Work, knowing that her
thoughts were with his there, answered quickly:
"Water! But that is impossible!"
"My secret--yet," she answered him.
Pages:
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230