"How to get even with you and Ralph."

"Get even with us!" Elijah looked at her in surprise.

"Yes."

"What do you mean?"

"You wouldn't let me into Las Cruces on the ground floor, so I am planning a building of my own."

"That was Ralph's doing; he didn't want you to run the risk of losing."

"My five thousand was as good, so far as it went, as Seymour's hundred.

He got in at fifty. He's made good at one hundred and forty. If you had let me in, I would have had twelve thousand five hundred now. It will take me a long time to earn that." She spoke with a.s.sumed levity.

Elijah was regarding her through half-closed eyes. He spoke very deliberately.

"You are right, I wanted to do it, but Ralph wouldn't consent. He meant all right," he added hastily. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll let you have five thousand dollars of my stock at fifty. That will set you straight."

"No it won't." There was no levity in Helen's voice.

"Why?" Elijah's eyes opened in surprise.

"Because that would be a present, and I don't want presents. What I get, I want to get myself."

"It wouldn't be a present. It would be a reward. You've earned it."

Elijah spoke earnestly and warmly.

"From you, not from the company," she replied decidedly and with finality. "Besides, I've discovered a way to help myself. That's better."

"That brings us back to the first point. What were you mulling over?"

Helen drew the map toward them and weighted down the corners.

"Oranges don't mind a breath of cold air now and then; they're dead set against a freeze out." She was looking quizzically at Elijah. An expression of a.s.sured satisfaction came over her face at Elijah's astonishment.

His head was thrown back as he raised his eyes to Helen's face.

"What do you mean?"

"As if I needed to tell you." Her lips were scornful at the limitations Elijah had put upon her. A smile softened the scorn and left a doubt as to which emotion was dominant. "You know that oranges on a hillside with southwestern exposure will do better than in an unprotected river bottom."

Elijah looked up fiercely.

"Has Ralph been talking?"

"No; but you have."

"I never said anything of the kind to you."

"I'm not a phonograph."

"You've no right to make use of information that you get from a confidential position." Elijah's voice was decided. There was a startled look on his face that he could not keep from being anxious.

"Not even to make myself more useful?"

Elijah did not commit himself to words. His eyes were expectant. Helen continued, pointing to the map.

"This land is practically vacant. It's owned by a Mexican. He would jump at a dollar an acre. It is separated from this of yours by a hill. He would never dream of a tunnel. Some one else may. There are thousands of acres just as good as the land you control. What's the matter with forming a land company independent of the Las Cruces? My five thousand would cover five thousand acres. When water gets to it, say it's worth a hundred; that will make me five hundred thousand to the good. That's better than a present of Las Cruces at fifty, and it will come from myself."

"I never told you about the tunnel. How did you find it out?"

Helen could not restrain a satisfied smile.

"You didn't tell me about a belt of country around here where the temperature never falls to thirty-two?"

Elijah glanced hastily around the room.

"That's all right." Helen had noted the look. "We're all alone."

"What do you want?" Elijah's look was not yet wholly one of relief.

"To get a little closer."

"There's a big future in that idea. I have been thinking of forming a land company. We can get control of the whole section." He swept his hand over the map.

"We don't want the earth, Elijah. It would be too much work to handle it. There wouldn't be any time for fun. We only want a goodly portion.

We want to do things, don't we?"

Elijah's eyes opened. An expression as of a revelation swept over his face. The simple "we" thrilled him through and through. Unconsciousness was dropping its mask and standing out in bold relief.

"We do, we do! and we will."

Helen was quite unconscious. She laughed at Elijah's enthusiasm.

"What kind of women have you lived with, I would like to know. This idea would not have surprised you if it had come from a man."

Helen spoke in ignorance. Unconsciously she had opened Elijah's eyes still wider. In a blinding flash, he saw Amy and Helen Lonsdale side by side. The vision brought him face to face with his past life with Amy; with its barren stretch, unwatered by sympathetic appreciation, only parched and withered by the burning rays of selfish love. He had given; but he had not received. What he had accomplished, he had accomplished not only by himself, but in spite of a hostile influence. So long as his work had been limited to the little patch of ground irrigated by the developed springs of his home, Amy had offered no objections to his enthusiasm. So far as it was possible for her, she had been interested, almost encouraging. Even over his visions of greater things, which he had laid before her unseeing eyes, she had smiled with acquiescence which he mistook for appreciation. Only when the films began to grow into material form, when the warp and woof must be gathered from others, and the frame of the loom itself must be builded with another's aid, did the real meaning of Elijah's dream suggest itself to Amy. Not that she saw clearly, only intuitively, that in the carrying out of his plans he would come in contact with others, that this contact would develop a comparison of herself with others, that this comparison would be unfavorable to her, and would end forever her ability to fill Elijah's mental vision. Therefore, at the very first signs of expansion, she had opposed the feeble barrier of her will. Elijah had no more recognized the barrier than he had Amy's limitations which made the barrier imperative to her. He had felt her opposition, and, without understanding it, he had chafed against it. He had not compared her with others, because up to this time he had not come in contact with those who made a comparison imperative.

Now the comparison was coming to him, had indeed already come.

Appreciation, sympathy, energy, a.s.sistance were manifest to him in every word and action of Helen Lonsdale. Her first suggestion of independent action had startled, then brought to him a sudden, overpowering realization of what she was, of what she might be to him in comparison with Amy. His first emotion was fear lest she might leave him, and, equipped with the knowledge which she had gained from her confidential relation with the company, start out on an independent course of her own. There was almost a feeling of resentment against Amy, as if she had defrauded him, and this was a thing which Elijah should have put aside; but he did not.

Helen was watching him. There was decided humor in her eyes, in the motion of her lips.

"What are you mulling over?"

Elijah started as if waking from a dream. He spoke hastily, but none the less decidedly.

"We must drive over together and see that land as soon as possible."