Balsamo did not
even ask him to sit down.
"Why do you come to me? You don't believe in me," said Balsamo, curtly.
"Why waste your half-sovereign?"
Ralph Martin, not being talkative, said nothing.
"However!" Balsamo proceeded. "Sit down, please. Let me look at your
hands. Ah! yes! Do you want to know anything?"
"Yes, of course."
"Everything?"
"Certainly."
"Let me advise you, then, to give up all thoughts of that woman."
"What woman?"
"You know what woman. She is a very little woman. Once she was nearly
drowned--far from here. You've loved her for a long time. You thought it
was a certainty. And upon my soul you were justified in thinking
so--almost! Look at that line. But it isn't a certainty. Look at that
line!"
Balsamo gazed at him coldly, and Ralph Martin knew not what to do or to
say. He was astounded; he was frightened; he was desolated. He perceived
at once that palmistry was after all a terrible reality.
"Tell me some more," he murmured.
And so Balsamo told him a great deal more, including full details of a
woman far finer than Florence Bostock, whom he was destined to meet in
the following year.
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