Through Clark's mind ran a quizzical idea that these two understood each other admirably, and he wondered how things would have turned out had he himself been one of a pair that did such team work.
"Then later, to-night."
The two nodded and moved off, talking earnestly, while Clark experienced a strange breathlessness. His soul was in tumult, and he reacted from the strain of the past few days. He perceived that with men like himself and his visitors lay the great economic forces of the world. And yet he was expected to make way.
Passing slowly through the big gates, towards which he had walked automatically, he moved on beyond the pulp mills towards the rapids, as though drawn by their insistent call. It was the call he had heard for years, even in his very dreams. And there, on the great boulder where he had once found her before, sat Elsie.
She had been there for an hour, gazing at the tumbled mass of foam and trying desperately to disentangle her thoughts. But even as she gazed, Clark's face seemed to come in between; keen, strong, undefeated and suggestive. It was not till now that she admitted to her own soul that he had dominated her imagination for months past. His achievements, his peculiar independence, his swift versatility had captured her crescent ambition, the ambition which he himself had unwittingly stimulated. She did not question whether this was love, she only knew that in this season, when his work seemed to be tottering over his head, she was ready to come to him and help rebuild it into something stronger and even greater.
She did not start, but looked at him with a strange satisfaction, as though it were meant from the first that they should meet at this time and place. Her eyes were very grave, and in them was that which made Clark's pulse beat faster. Something whispered that each of them had been saved over for this moment.
"I haven't seen much of you for the past few months," he said presently.
"I know that, but I know why. Are things better now?"
He nodded. "They may be very shortly."
"I'm so glad. You can't imagine how anxious I've been,—the riots and your escape—and—"