'The saints! That is how all weaklings and cowards talk. What harm could it do any saint in heaven for you to get those magic things? If they be the devil's toys and tools, as you say, more reason to pluck them out of holy ground.' 'How you go on!' muttered Caris, whose slower brain was scared and terrified by his companion's rapid and fearless strides of thought. 'Heaven have mercy on us! You would have me commit sacrilege! Rifle a tomb! Holy Christ! and that tomb my mother's!' The sweat stood on his brow, and made the chestnut curls of his hair wet as with dew or rain. Santina poured into his all the magnetic force and fire of her own eyes, shining in the dusk like some wild cat of the woods. 'Sacrilege! whew! Where got you that big word? You put the things in; you can take the things out. Your mother will sleep sounder without them. I want them, my lad, do you understand? I want them. And what I want I get from those who love me; and those who deny me, hate me, and I hate them.' Caris shuddered as he heard. 'I love you,' he stammered. 'Do not hate me--for pity's sake, do not hate me.' 'Obey me, then,' she said, with her dark level brows contracting over her luminous eyes. 'In anything else!' 'Oh, ay! It is always anything else, except the one thing which is wanted!' 'But what is it you want?' 'I want the charms and the wand and the book out of your mother's grave.' 'What could you do with them? Without the knowledge, they are no more than a dry twig and a few dirty play-cards.' 'How know you what knowledge I have? I want the things, that is all, I tell you.' 'They were accursed if they had any use in them. And what use had they? She who understood them lived and died all but a beggar. If they had any power in them, they cheated and starved her.' The speech was a long one for Caris, whose thoughts were so little used to fit themselves to utterance. Santina heard him with the passionate impatience and intolerance of a swift mind with a dull one, of a bold will with a timid nature. She had set her soul on possessing these magic things; she was convinced that she should find the way to make them work; superstition was intense and overwhelming in her, and allied to a furious ambition, all the more powerful because given loose rein through her complete ignorance. 'Oh, you white-livered ninny!' she cried to him, with boundless scorn. 'Would to Heaven Black Simon had buried his blade into you! It would have rid the earth of a dolt and a dastard!' 'Then let me be, if I be worth so little,' said Caris sullenly, whilst his eyes devoured her beauty half seen in the darkness which preceded the late rising of the moon. Then she saw that she had mistaken her path, and she changed it. She let great tears come into her eyes, and her mouth trembled, and her bosom heaved.