She rested her fingers lightly on the back of his hand, extending them gently down until they fell between his own.

"Denny, you big, big boy!" she murmured. "Do you suppose every man marries his first choice?"

"It has always seemed to me that a second choice is a makeshift. It doesn't seem quite square--"

"No. I fancy some second choices are really first choices. Wisdom comes with experience, you know."

"Not always. At any rate I couldn't marry her while my heart was yours."

"I suppose not," she answered, and again he noted a touch of weariness in her voice. "I know something of what divided affection--if one can even say it is divided--means. Denny, I will make a confession. I knew you would come back; I always was sure you would come back. 'Then,' I said to myself, 'I will see this man Grant as he is, and the reality will clear my brain of all this idealism which I have woven about him.'

Perhaps you know what I mean. We sometimes meet people who impress us greatly at the time, but a second meeting, perhaps years later, has a very different effect. It sweeps all the idealism away, and we wonder what it was that could have charmed us so. Well--I hoped--I really hoped for some experience like that with you. If only I could meet you again and find that, after all, you were just like other men; self-centred, arrogant, kind, perhaps, but quite superior--if I could only find THAT to be true then the mirage in which I have lived for all these years would be swept away and my old philosophy that after all it doesn't matter much whom one marries so long as he is respectable and gives her a good living would be vindicated. And so I have encouraged you to come here; I have been most unconventional, I know, but I was always that--I have cultivated your acquaintance, and, Denny, I am SO disappointed!"

"Disappointed? Then the mirage HAS cleared away?"

"On the contrary, it grows more distorted every day. I see you towering above all your fellow humans; reaching up into a heaven so far above them that they don't even know of its existence. I see you as really The Man-On-the-Hill, with a vision which lays all this selfish, commonplace world at your feet. The idealism which I thought must fade away is justified--heightened--by the reality."

She had turned her face to him, and Grant, little as he understood the ways of women, knew that she had made her great confession. For a moment he held himself in check.... then from somewhere in his subconsciousness came ringing the phrase, "Every man worth his salt.... takes what he wants." That was Transley's morality; Transley, the Usurper, who had bullied himself into possession of this heart which he had never won and could never hold; Transley, the fool, frittering his days and nights with money! He seized her in his arms, crushing down her weak resistance; he drew her to him until, as in that day by a foothill river somewhere in the sunny past, her lips met his and returned their caress.

He cared now for nothing--nothing in the whole world but this quivering womanhood within his arms....

"You must go," she whispered at length. "It is late, and Frank's habits are somewhat erratic."

He held her at arm's length, his hands upon her shoulders. "Do you suppose that fear--of anything--can make me surrender you now?"

"Not fear, perhaps--I know it could not be fear--but good sense may do it. It was not fear that made me send you home early from your previous calls. It was discretion."

"Oh!" he said, a new light dawning, and he marvelled again at her consummate artistry.

"But I must tell you," she resumed, "Frank leaves on a business trip to-morrow night. He will be gone for some time, and I shall motor into town to see him off. I am wondering about Wilson," she hurried on, as though not daring to weigh her words; "Sarah will be away--I am letting her have a little holiday--and I can't take Wilson into town with me because it will be so late." Then, with a burst of confession she spoke more deliberately. "That isn't exactly the reason, Dennison; Frank doesn't know I have let Sarah go, and I--I can't explain."

Her face shone pink and warm in the glow of the firelight, and as the significance of her words sank in upon him Grant marvelled at that wizardry of the G.o.ds which could bring such homage to the foot of man.

A tenderness such as he had never known suffused him; her very presence was holy.

"Bring the boy over and let him spend the night with me. We are great chums and we shall get along splendidly."

CHAPTER XXI

Grant spent his Sunday forenoon in an exhaustive house-cleaning campaign. Bachelor life on the farm is not conducive to domestic delicacy, and although Grant had never abandoned the fundamentals he had allowed his interpretation of essential cleanliness to become somewhat liberal. The result was that the day of rest usually confronted him with a considerable array of unwashed pots and pans and other culinary utensils. To-day, while the tawny autumn hills seemed to fairly heave and sigh with contentment under a splendor of opalescent sunshine, he scoured the contents of his kitchen until they shone; washed the floor; shook the rugs from the living-room and swept the corners, even behind the gramophone; cleared the ashes from the hearth and generally set his house in order, for was not she to call upon him that evening on her way to town, and was not little Wilson--he of the high adventures with teddy-bear and knife and pig--to spend the night with him?

When he was able to view his handiwork with a feeling that even feminine eyes would find nothing to offend, Grant did an unwonted thing. He unlocked the whim-room and opened the windows that the fresh air might play through the silent chamber. To the west the mountains looked down in sombre placidity as they had looked down every bright autumn morning since the dawn of time, their shoulders bathed in purple mist and their snow-crowned summits shining in the sun. For a long time Grant stood drinking in the scene; the fertile valley lying with its square farms like a checker-board of the G.o.ds, with its round little lakes beating back the white sunshine like coins from the currency of the Creator; the ruddy copper-colored patches of ripe wheat, and drowsy herds motionless upon the receding hills; the blue-green ribbon of river with its yellow fringes of cottonwood and bluffs of forbidding spruce, and behind and over all the silent, majestic mountains. It was a sight to make the soul of man rise up and say, "I know I stand on the heights of the Eternal!"

Then as his eyes followed the course of the river Grant picked out a column of thin blue smoke, and knew that Zen was cooking her Sunday dinner.

The thought turned him to his dusting of the whim-room, and afterwards to his own kitchen. When he had lunched and dressed he took a stroll over the hills, thinking a great deal, but finding no answer. On his return he descried the familiar figure of Linder in a semi-rec.u.mbent position on the porch, and Linder's well-worn car in the yard.

"How goes it, Linder?" he said, cheerily, as he came up. "Is the Big Idea going to fructify?"

"The Big Idea seems to be all right. You planned it well."

"Thanks. But is it going to be self-supporting--I mean in the matter of motive power. Would it run if you and I and Murdoch were wiped out?"

"Everything must have a head."

"Democracy must find its own head--must grow it out of the materials supplied. If it doesn't do that it's a failure, and the Big Idea will end in being the Big Fizzle. That's why I'm leaving it so severely alone--I want to see which way it's headed."

"I could suggest another reason," said Linder, pointedly.

"Another reason for what?"

"For your leaving it so severely alone."

"What are you driving at?" demanded Grant, somewhat petulantly. "You are in a taciturn mood to-day, Linder."

"Perhaps I am, Grant, and if so it comes from wondering how a man with as much brains as you have can be such a d.a.m.ned fool upon occasion."

"Drop the riddles, Linder. Let me have it in the face."

"It's just like this, Grant, old boy," said Linder, getting up and putting his hand on his friend's shoulder, "I feel that I still have an interest in the chap who saved all of me except what this empty sleeve stands for, and it's that interest which makes me speak about something which you may say is none of my business. I was out here Monday night to see you, and you were not at home. I came out again Wednesday, and you were not at home. I came last night and you were not at home, and had not come back at midnight. Your horses were in the barn; you were not far away."

"Why didn't you telephone me?"

"If I hadn't cared more for you than I do for my job and the Big Idea thrown in I could have settled it that way. But, Grant, I do."

"I believe you. But why this sudden worry over me? I was merely spending the evening at a neighbor's."

"Yes--at Transley's. Transley was in town, and Mrs. Transley is--not responsible--where you are concerned."

"Linder!"

"I saw it all that night at dinner there. Some things are plain to everyone--except those most involved. Now it's not my job to say to you what's right and wrong, but the way it looks to me is this: what's the use of setting up a new code of morality about money which concerns, after all, only some of us, if you're going to knock down those things which concern all of us?"

Grant regarded his foreman for some time without answering. "I appreciate your frankness, Linder," he said at length. "Your friendship, which I can never question, gives you that privilege. Man to man, I'm going to be equally frank with you. To begin with, I suppose you will admit that Y.D.'s daughter is a strong character, a woman quite capable of directing her own affairs?"

"The stronger the engine the bigger the smash if there's a wreck."

"It's not a case of wrecking; it's a case of trying to save something out of the wreck. Convention, Linder, is a torture-monger; it binds men and women to the stake of propriety and bids them smile while it snuffs out all the soul that's in them. We have pitted ourselves against convention in economic affairs; shall we not--"

"No! It was pure unselfishness which led you into the Big Idea. That isn't what's leading you now."

"Well, let me put it another way. Transley is a clever man of affairs.

He knows how to accomplish his ends. He applied the methods--somewhat modified for the occasion--of a landshark in winning his wife. He makes a great appearance of unselfishness, but in reality he is selfish to the core. He lavishes money on her to satisfy his own vanity, but as for her finer nature, the real Zen, her soul if you like--he doesn't even know she has one. He obtained possession by false pretences. Which is the more moral thing--to leave him in possession, or to throw him out?

Didn't you yourself hear him say that men who are worth their salt take what they want?"

"Since when did you let him set YOUR standards?"

"That's hardly fair."