"Oh," she said, with growing indignation, "how can you draw such a comparison? How can you? We are a young territory, Mr. Stratton, with a wide, unsettled border. What will become of us if the few educated and able men among us fail? If they wilfully break established laws; sink to the level of common smugglers, thieves?"
She rose in fine scorn from the place beside him and took a distant seat. Stratton's look followed her and the flush again left his face pale. "But I forgive her," he said at last, softly, "I forgive her, she is so charming when she is angry. Where most any other woman's voice would shrill, hers always drops to that nice contralto note."
"And you know she is right," said Alice, taking the vacant place. "It's just what I should have said, if she hadn't."
"Yes?" And he smiled again. "That surprises me—after that experience on the mountain."
"That was different. Mose believed he was justified. He was true to his traditions. That summit was his holy of holies and we were vandals come to desecrate." Her eyes turned to the great crest of Mt. Rainier, looming out of the southeast, its crater hollowed gently, like a throne between its triple alabaster domes. "Whenever I try to shake that belief I feel guilty, Mr. Stratton. It's so much more beautiful than any I can offer in exchange. After all, the most I can do is to educate Mose in other ways, and give him an occupation. The rest may come."
"I am hopelessly dense," said Stratton. "I fail to see why you draw the line so sharply. You forgive that young rascal of a horse thief and help him. But you are uncompromising, exacting, if a man has the misfortune to be—well—a gentleman."
She gave him a level look. "I consider the motive; whether he knows better."
"Oh," said Philip, laughing, "you don't know her, Stratton. In her secret heart she'd love to be a smuggler and a pirate, and defying the Government, go sailing down among those purple islands of De Haro. And principle or no principle, it would be great fun, I confess, to match my little boat against a revenue cutter. Only give me the wind and a fair start, and I could set a pace for the best of them. There isn't a channel I haven't taken her through; and I'll wager I know every tide-rip and shoal the Sound over."
Kingsley said what he pleased; his life was an open sea. If sometimes he ran too close into the wind, he knew, or he thought that he knew, how to recover, but his glance moved to his wife and rested a moment.
But clearly Louise no longer listened. Her face, the face of a dreamer, rapt, sensitive, was turned to the Olympic Mountains, shining across the ruffled sea. It was as though she saw farther than other women, and beyond those amethyst peaks and shoulders, breaking through cloud, up at the source of those shafts of mellow light, that struck the gorges between the blue foothills, she found a higher country all her own.