“There are times, David, when I hate the luxuries—knowing so well the source of so many of them,” she declared; and then: “Are you trying to tell me that you have thrown all of the ideals overboard?”
The appeal in her tone sobered him suddenly.
“No, I hope not, Virginia. What I’ve been saying applies only to business; the business conscience, if you want to call it that. I have plenty of the other kind left. And it’s giving me a lot of trouble.”
“Is the trouble like the professional things you were talking about a few minutes ago?—explainable to this woman?”
“No; at least, not yet. It is a question of duty, and how much duty. It is as if you had incurred a debt and didn’t know the amount of it. You’d be willing to pay, perhaps, if you only knew how much to pay.”
“That sounds entrancingly interesting,” she said. And then: “To whom do you owe the debt, David?”
“I’m not sure that I owe it to any one; or if there really is a debt. I shall have to think it out, and when I know, I’ll tell you.”
From this their talk slipped back to the big job and its askings and drawbacks, and so led up to the moral cancer whose lights they could see twinkling in the distance at the foot of Gold Hill. David spoke of the demoralizing effects of the cancer upon his working force, and told of his futile effort to enlist the railroad people on the side of reform.
“Mr. Ford would do something, if he knew,” the young woman suggested, naming the president of the P. S-W. system.
“I believe he would; but it is like climbing a ladder a mile high to get to him. From what Jolly said, I gathered that the Brewster officials are absolutely indifferent, and to get at Mr. Ford I’d have to go over their heads.”