And then I went on to tell her how it was a pure platonic love for
diamonds themselves that had turned me to trade in those lovely stones;
how their iridescent glitter delighted my eye, and how the very act of
handling them in their dull, rough, uncut state was a joy to me that
almost amounted to monomania. The theme pleased her, and she asked me
to go on. I had not spoken of diamonds once during all those long years
of darkness, and to discourse about them again to any one who took the
obvious interest in them that she did was for me an indulgence nothing
short of delicious. And when we parted for the night, and I found
myself once more alone, I was almost surprised that I had said nothing
about this new enterprise in the diamond industry which fortune had
thrown in my way. "I feel sure," I told myself, "that she will share
this great secret. She is the one person in this world for me to trust.
But I cannot part with it yet. Besides, I have only known her two days.
Time enough when we get back to Palma."
We went out afoot after breakfast next morning, and during all that day
I revelled in the beauties of Miramar, the finest piece of cliff and
coast scenery in Europe. There is one of the many watch-towers here, a
gray old building whose architect was dead before the Pharaohs or even
the Phoenicians began to pile stones together, and yet the old citadel
has not bent one inch to all that string of time. We ascended half-way
outside up a ladder, and entered a small domed chamber. Then we climbed
together on to the roof, which is half a covered sentry-house, half a
balustraded lookout post. We could hear the rattle of the surf creaming
away twelve hundred feet below, and could look down almost sheer into
the many-hued blue water; and behind there were mountains rising
steeply up into the clouds. The view was incomparable.
Then we went down again, winding along a narrow path that was edged
with flowering heath, and gained a jutting crag which seemed almost to
overhang the water; and going on farther amongst the wind-brushed
pines, we came to another spot which we had previously viewed from
above. It was a little round stone oratory perched on the crest of a
jutting pinnacle, and linked to the main rock by a narrow causeway
which rested on a slender arch. It was lit by a lantern in the roof,
and over the altar was the marble effigy of a man of years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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