“’Tis you that have changed, Davie, till I’d hardly be knowing you,” she said.
“Yes; I’ve changed. And so have you, Judith. Are you living with Dargin?”
“I am not!”
“But from what they tell me, you might as well be. You’ve taken help from him.”
“And if I have; ’tis nothing I’ve taken that an honest woman might not take.”
“You’re telling me the truth?”
“I am. When did I ever lie to you, Davie?”
“Never,” he conceded. But the main question was yet untouched. “I know how you came here to Powder Can—Plegg told me,” he went on bluntly. “It’s no place for you, here in Powder Can. You know that, don’t you?”
“Where would I be going, then?”
David held his head in his hands and tried to think. With the return of his faculties the spirit of morose disheartenment and impatient resentment which had brought him to the mining-camp, and had been the chief factor in precipitating the quarrel with Lushing, was reasserting itself. Since the bitter moods grow by what they feed upon, he could see nothing in just perspective. What a fool’s Paradise he had been living in since the Grillage private car had come to anchor in the construction yard! He had been crying for the moon, and the moon had been kind enough to shine for him—when there was no one else to shine upon. But now there were others....