"'Tis a rogue's roost of a hole!" cried Lee. "You shall stop in it no longer, else you'll faint for lack of sweet air. 'Twill take much time and patience to exhaust all these crannies and clefts. My candle wanes." "Let us depart then and visit the place again presently when time allows it." "But you've lost your old eagerness," he said shortly. "Not so. I care very much. Why, it is life or death almost--for father. I know him to be sore driven for money." "For your father. And is it nothing that it means life or death for Jack Lee? Have you forgotten what you yourself proposed? Oh, Grace, I'm afraid you have. I was to go to the wars----" "The wars are like to be soon over now, dear John." He made no answer, but lighted her to the steps and helped her to ascend them. Things recently suspected, like clouds lifting their furrowed foreheads above a remote horizon, grew daily nearer, and this experience within the treasure house had brought alarm to the very zenith of John Lee's mind. He was quick to see and to read each mood and humour of Grace Malherb. A hesitation before a kiss, a wayward breaking off in mid-speech, sudden ardours to atone for periods of coldness--all these shadows and half-shades of change, and of a sense of honour at war with overmastering love, had made themselves manifest in the girl; and Lee had read them while she was ignorant of their visible existence. At first such apparitions from her inner self merely mystified him, and the memory of them vanished with the mood that displayed them; but now more clearly he began to perceive that her highest graciousness followed upon coolness; that she was kindest after being least kind; that her outbursts of wild affection sprang not from love, but remorse. He battled against the belief; but it grew into a conviction, bitter and sure. To-day, as he restored the cover-stone of the cave, he felt that another nail was struck into hope's coffin; and the thought wakened no indignation against Grace, but rather a mighty, melancholy anger with himself, that he had proved a man too feeble to hold his pearl against all comers. "We must seek and seek and never despair," said Grace as they turned to ride homeward. "I feel positive that the amphora is there. If necessary you will have to hide in the den of the tigress yourself, John, and mark her when she supposes herself alone. Yet I should tremble for you. 'Twill be an awful day for that old woman when she loses the amphora. It is her god." "If I got it, I could almost find it in my heart to break it." "John Lee!" "Why, I spoke as I felt. I'm beginning to see terrible things beyond your strength to hide, Gracie. You would hide them if you could; you think in your heart that they are hidden; but they peep out and scourge me for my awful folly." "What--what can you mean?"