Elijah's eyes opened. An expression as of a revelation swept over his face. The simple "we" thrilled him through and through. Unconsciousness was dropping its mask and standing out in bold relief.
"We do, we do! and we will."
Helen was quite unconscious. She laughed at Elijah's enthusiasm.
"What kind of women have you lived with, I would like to know. This idea would not have surprised you if it had come from a man."
Helen spoke in ignorance. Unconsciously she had opened Elijah's eyes still wider. In a blinding flash, he saw Amy and Helen Lonsdale side by side. The vision brought him face to face with his past life with Amy; with its barren stretch, unwatered by sympathetic appreciation, only parched and withered by the burning rays of selfish love. He had given; but he had not received. What he had accomplished, he had accomplished not only by himself, but in spite of a hostile influence. So long as his work had been limited to the little patch of ground irrigated by the developed springs of his home, Amy had offered no objections to his enthusiasm. So far as it was possible for her, she had been interested, almost encouraging. Even over his visions of greater things, which he had laid before her unseeing eyes, she had smiled with acquiescence which he mistook for appreciation. Only when the films began to grow into material form, when the warp and woof must be gathered from others, and the frame of the loom itself must be builded with another's aid, did the real meaning of Elijah's dream suggest itself to Amy. Not that she saw clearly, only intuitively, that in the carrying out of his plans he would come in contact with others, that this contact would develop a comparison of herself with others, that this comparison would be unfavorable to her, and would end forever her ability to fill Elijah's mental vision. Therefore, at the very first signs of expansion, she had opposed the feeble barrier of her will. Elijah had no more recognized the barrier than he had Amy's limitations which made the barrier imperative to her. He had felt her opposition, and, without understanding it, he had chafed against it. He had not compared her with others, because up to this time he had not come in contact with those who made a comparison imperative.
Now the comparison was coming to him, had indeed already come. Appreciation, sympathy, energy, assistance were manifest to him in every word and action of Helen Lonsdale. Her first suggestion of independent action had startled, then brought to him a sudden, overpowering realization of what she was, of what she might be to him in comparison with Amy. His first emotion was fear lest she might leave him, and, equipped with the knowledge which she had gained from her confidential relation with the company, start out on an independent course of her own. There was almost a feeling of resentment against Amy, as if she had defrauded him, and this was a thing which Elijah should have put aside; but he did not.
Helen was watching him. There was decided humor in her eyes, in the motion of her lips.
"What are you mulling over?"
Elijah started as if waking from a dream. He spoke hastily, but none the less decidedly.
"We must drive over together and see that land as soon as possible."