"Miss Ballard will have to settle it--not you or I."

"She can't settle it. Mary is a dreamer. You capture her with your

imagination--with your talk of your work--and your people and the

little gardens, and all that. And she sees it as you want her to see

it, not as it really is. But I know the deadly dullness, the

awfulness. Why, man, I spent a winter down there, at one of the

resorts and now and then we rode through the country. It was a desert,

I tell you, Poole, a desert; it is no place for a woman."

"You saw nothing but the charred pines and the sand. I could show you

other things."

"What, for example?"

"I could show you an awakened people. I could show you a community

throwing off the shackles of idleness and ignorance. I could show you

men once tied to old traditions, meeting with eagerness the new ideals.

There is nothing in the world more wonderful than such an awakening,

Bigelow. But one must have the Vision to grasp it. And faith to

believe it. It is the dreamers, thank God, who see beyond to-day into

to-morrow. I haven't wealth or position to offer Mary, but I can offer

her a world which needs her. And if I know her, as I think I do, she

will care more for my world than for yours."

He did not raise his voice, but Porter felt the force of his restrained

eloquence, as he knew Mary would feel it if it were applied to her.

And now he shot his poisoned dart.

"At first, perhaps. But when it came to building a home, there'd be

always the stigma of your past, and she's a proud little thing, Poole."

Roger winced. "My past is buried. It is my future of which we must

speak."

"You can't bury a past. You haven't even a pulpit to preach from."

Roger pushed back his chair. "I am tempted to wish," his voice was

grim, "that we were not quite so civilized, not quite so modern.

Pistols or swords would seem an easier way than this."

"I'm fighting for Mary. You've got to let go. None of her friends

want it--Gordon would never consent."

It seemed to Roger that all the whispers which had assailed him in the

days of long ago were rushing back upon him in a roaring wave of sound.

He rose, white and shaken. "Do you call it victory when one man stabs

another through the heart? Well, if this is your victory, Bigelow--you

are welcome to it."




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