“So I am! So I am! But I said I wouldn’t and that is the end of it. I want that last year at the School.”
“What shall you do with all that money—if your hill turns out to be full of gold? More, I hope, than the rest of our millionaires have done for Montana—which is exactly nothing. You might give the State a complete irrigating system.”
“Good idea! Perhaps I will. But that is in the future. I want the fun first——”
“Fun? It is the passion of your life, your great romance. You’ll never love a woman like that.”
“Of course not.” But he was staring at her. He had a sensation of something swimming in the depths of his mind, striving to reach the surface. He changed his position suddenly and sat up. “And you?” he asked. “You have the same vision. Couldn’t you feel the same absorbing passion——”
“For ore?” The scorn of her entire sex was in her voice. “Dead cold metal——”
“Every molecule, every individual atom is alive and quivering——”
“I am not interested in chemistry.”
He still stared at her. Her cheeks were scarlet, her eyes blazing. She sprang to her feet.
“Ida is the wife for you! She’ll never ask much of you and you never could hurt her, not even if you tried, she is fortunate in lacking just that which you could hurt.”