"Does she say anything about returning to England? She had it in mind—just after the earthquake."
"She has made one or two casual allusions to her return, but she never plans far ahead—does what takes her fancy at the moment. But this life will never suit her. I imagine she will go before long. London is in her blood. Now that she can live properly—will have all she can, or ought to want, when the building is paying, there is no object in her remaining here."
"How goes the building?"
"How can anything go in this infernal weather? The old shanties are down, and the contractor had a sort of tent erected and has done some work on the foundations. I should have come directly to California if I had had any idea of the money to be made by selling off my superfluous land and putting up that building. It might be finished, by this time. Why didn't you tell me?"
"I am only remodelling my own brain on business lines by slow degrees, and no echo of this building fever reached me in Europe. You will remember that I did write, while you were wandering about America, that Mr. Colton suggested it for both of us. If I did not dwell on the subject it was because I had a feminine horror of the mortgage—and no idea that you were so keen on making money."
"I am thinking principally of my mother. When a woman has always had the world I doubt if she can live long out of it. San Francisco is all very well for the young and adventurous, and for those with a strong sense of the picturesque, but I can imagine that to a woman of her age and experience——Do you know—" he burst out. "I don't know where I am. What an extraordinary thing heredity is! I doubt if most people, although they would call that a platitude, realize that heredity is anything more than a telling word. There are times when I am sitting at my stove, surrounded by all those typical American men, who seldom mention a subject but politics and farming—for I tabû chickens—or the intensely local interests, more or less affected by politics,—there are times when I actually feel the nameless ambitious young fellow—not born in a log-cabin, perhaps, but next door to it—and endowed with that keen compact pioneer determination to stride straight to my goal, whether it is the White House or—well—the Presidency of a Trust Company. I forget—good God!—Are those years behind me in England? I have caught myself wishing that I had kept a scrap-book like other idiots. It escapes my memory altogether at times, that I have but to take a steamer out of New York to reach the top of civilization again in less than a week."
"Perhaps it suggests itself when you remember that with the income you can command before long, life in England will be more worth while."
"That was as nasty a one as you ever gave me! No one knows better than yourself what brought me to America, and that those conditions cannot be altered by money. Could I not have had Julia Kaye's fortune? You need not be nasty again! You forget that not only was I in love with her—or thought I was—but could have given her the equivalent. She would be the last to claim that she was to pay too high a price, even with me thrown in. If you don't beg my pardon I'll leave the house."
"I beg your pardon," said Isabel, hastily. She was thrilled with curiosity; she had never seen him so nearly excited, with the exception of one memorable and painful moment. She fancied that she could see one of the barriers between them sway.
"It may be that this sudden prospect of wealth, or rather of a goodish income that would enable me to keep up a decent establishment in town, and a bit of a place somewhere in the hunting country, has upset my equilibrium, but it occurred to me this morning as I was splashing through the mud—I had to go out to the ranch—in fact it came over me with such a rush that I felt like Don Quixote, and every landmark looked like a windmill—what is England to-day but the very apex of civilization? The Mecca, the reward, of every man and woman with the breeding and the intelligence to appreciate it? The best of everything goes there, you have but to turn round to help yourself to an infinite variety—to be found piecemeal everywhere else on earth. And the very best is mine, by inheritance and personal effort. Why in thunder am I out here on this ragged edge of civilization struggling with almost primitive conditions?—elemental badness, sure enough! What is my object? Merely to bring about a set of conditions that exists in England to-day. I have them there. Why am I wading into filth up to my knees, for the sake of an alien race, when they are mine already?"