Page 238 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

there was to say a long time ago. There is nothing to say now.
There were things to be done. We have done them; we have
gone on doing them. There is no going back now. I don’t
suppose that, even from the first, there was really any pos-
sible way back. And, what’s more, we can’t even afford to
stand still.’
‘Ah, if one only knew how far you mean to go,’ said his
wife. inwardly trembling, but in an almost playful tone.
‘Any distance, any length, of course,’ was the answer, in a
matter-of-fact tone, which caused Mrs. Gould to make an-
other effort to repress a shudder.
She stood up, smiling graciously, and her little figure
seemed to be diminished still more by the heavy mass of
her hair and the long train of her gown.
‘But always to success,’ she said, persuasively.
Charles Gould, enveloping her in the steely blue glance
of his attentive eyes, answered without hesitation—
‘Oh, there is no alternative.’
He put an immense assurance into his tone. As to the
words, this was all that his conscience would allow him to
say.
Mrs. Gould’s smile remained a shade too long upon her
lips. She murmured—
‘I will leave you; I’ve a slight headache. The heat, the dust,
were indeed—I suppose you are going back to the mine be-
fore the morning?’
‘At midnight,’ said Charles Gould. ‘We are bringing down
the silver to-morrow. Then I shall take three whole days off
in town with you.’