The Mask | Page 8

I going to do now?"
"Why don't you let François attend to such things?" answered his wife
calmly. "He understands packing so much better than you. You're so
strong, you break everything."
She looked fondly at her husband's tall, athletic figure. He turned to her
with a smile.
"I guess you're right," he said. "But where the devil is François?"
"I don't know. I sent him downstairs to tell the cook to have some nice
sandwiches ready when you come home after the director's meeting
tonight, but that's an hour ago----"
His ill humor gone, Kenneth looked up and smiled at her. Putting his
arm about her, fondly he said:
"Dear little wife. You're always thinking of the comfort of others.
You're the most unselfish, the most adorable, the most----"
"Stop, Kenneth, don't be foolish or I shall believe you----"
His face red from his recent exertions, he sat down on the arm of a
chair to rest a little. Full of the coming journey, he had already

forgotten his wife's anxiety. The great business schemes he had in mind
dwarfed for the time being every other consideration. He could think
and talk of nothing but diamonds. Huge crystals, worth untold millions
as big as a fist, flashed at him from every corner of the room. Fabulous
fortunes had been made in the diamond mines of South Africa. Why
should he not be as successful as others? The romance of the Cullinan
might be repeated, even surpassed. Well he recalled how he had been
thrilled by the sensational story of the discovery of that colossal gem,
more than three times the size of the Excelsior, the wonder of the
modern world. In imagination, he saw it now. An old-fashioned Boer
farm, transformed into a modern mining camp. A moonlight night. A
man strolling idly along the rugged, desolate veldt, chances to look
down. His eye suddenly catches a gleam in the rough face of the jagged
slope. He stoops and picks up what looks like a piece of ice. Quickly he
returns to his office and hands it to his chief. The men look at each
other in silence. To all parts of the world goes the message that a
diamond has been found four times bigger than the largest gem in the
world. A stone weighing over 3,000 carats and worth four million
dollars. He could already imagine himself far from civilization among
the barren mountains of South Africa, prospecting in wide stretches of
stone and gravel, picking up the brilliant dazzling stones by the
handful.
"Have you any idea," he said, "what the mines have produced?"
She shook her head indifferently.
"No, and I don't want to know. I don't want you to go--that's all."
"Their output in the last ten years is estimated at no less than
$400,000,000. Just think of it. Four hundred millions! Well, dear, I and
a few others want some of it, and we're going to get it."
"But aren't we rich enough already?" she demanded petulantly. "Why
this fever to get richer and richer? We are happy with what we have.
Why run the risks to gain what after all will only be a surplus? We can't
possibly spend it."

Her husband's eyes flashed. The lines about his mouth tightened as he
retorted:
"One never has enough! You women don't understand. As long as you
have all the amusement you crave, all the frocks you want, all the
jewelry you covet, you think that is all there is to life."
She looked up at him reproachfully and seemed about to protest when
he added hurriedly:
"Oh, I don't mean you. I know you are not that kind of woman. You are
more serious, more sensible. I mean the average society woman whose
only concern in life is dress and show. We men have different aims,
higher ambitions. I'm well to do, as the term goes. I have an income of
over $100,000 a year, a splendidly appointed town house, a show place
in the country. Above all I have the most adorable wife in all the world.
Most men would be satisfied. I am not. I want still more. I have the
money craze, an uncontrollable lust to pile up millions. My ambition is
to wield the power that only the possession of vast wealth confers. The
resources of this vast country are practically in the hands of half a
dozen men. Merely by holding up a finger, these men could, to suit
their own selfish ends, start a universal panic which might bring about
a financial cataclysm, involving the whole world in disaster. I do not
say they would use this power for evil, but they are in position to do so
if it served their purpose. I want to have such power,