He laughed lightly. "Just because I don't agree with you about the dam," he said; "there, that's it, you know. Why, my dear girl, suppose all America had been reserved for its beauty, set aside for the perpetual preservation of the buffaloes and the scenery,—where would you and I be now?"
She looked away from him in her curious, contemplative way. "If you knew," she said, after a minute, "how silly and petty and trivial such arguments sound to thinking people, you'd positively blush with shame to use them. It's like arguing with a baby to try to talk Heaven's reason with the ordinary man; he just sees his own little, narrow, earthly standpoint. I wonder whether it's worth while to ever try to be serious with you. You know very well that the most of your brethren would be willing to wreck the Yellowstone from end to end, if they could make their own private and personal fortunes building railways through it."
Ingram laughed again. "Where would the country be without railroads?" he asked.
She withdrew the meaning in her gaze out of the infinite beyond, where it seemed to float easily, and centred it on him.
"Just to think," she said, with deep meaning, "that ten years ago I might have married you, and had to face your system of logic for life!"
"Is it as bad as that?"
"It might have been. We might have made it so before we knew better. That's the rub in marriage. Every one does it before he or she has settled his or her own views. I wasn't much of an idealist ten years ago, and you were not much of anything. But if I could have married any one then, I should have married you."
A shadow fell upon his face. He turned his chair a little from the table. "If I was not the right one, I wish that you had married some other man then,—I wish it with all my heart. You would have been so much happier. You're not happy now—you know that. It would have been so much better for you if you had married."
She smiled and shook her head. "Oh, no. It is much better as it is. Infinitely better. It's like coming up against a great granite wall to try and talk to you, Ronald, because you simply cannot understand what I mean when I say words, but nevertheless, believe me, I'm on my knees day and night, figuratively speaking, thanking God that I didn't marry then. I wasn't meant to marry then. I've been needed single."
He took out his cigarette case. "What were you meant for, then, do you think?" he queried; "nothing except as a convenience for others?"