Page:Gaston Leroux--The bride of the sun.djvu/28

14 and all it meant—the riches that would flow through it after the opening of the Panama Canal ... the renascence of Peru.... Chili conquered and Santiago crushed ... the defeat of 1878 avenged ... and San Francisco yonder had best look to itself!

Diet, listening to the girl at his side, was amazed to hear her give figures with as much authority as an engineer, estimate profits as surely as a shipowner. What a splendid little brain it was, and how much better than that imaginative, dreaming type which he deplored both in men and women, a type exemplified by his uncle with all his chimeric hypotheses.

"It would all be so splendid," she added, frowning, "if we only stopped making fools of ourselves. But we are always doing it."

"In what way?"

"With our revolutions!"

They were now standing on the quay, while the liner gradually swung in.

"Oh, are they at it here as well? We found one on in Venezuela, and then another at Guayaquil. The city was under martial law, and some general or other who had been in power for about forty-eight hours was preparing to march on Quito and wipe out the government."

"Yes, it is like an epidemic," went on the