Oh, this was familiar ground! He had gone over it in a sort of sub-conscious way a hundred times, each time apparently the final one. It had been quite settled when this slender little woman first lifted her face to him, and now nothing was settled.
It was very still and cold. There was no stream to sing up through the pines, and no wind in the pines to answer should the stream call. Nothing seemed to be stirring save the pensive man and his faithful pony.
Reaching the upper levels he spurred on at a gallop, finding some relief in the pounding action of the saddle and in the rush of air past his ears. The moon was late, but when it came it seemed to help him, lightening his mood as it lightened the trail. The big ledges and lowering, lesser peaks lifted into the dark sky weirdly translucent, and their upper edges seemed smooth and graceful as the rims of bubbles. Solid rock seemed melted and transfused with light and air. It was all miraculously beautiful, and the sore-hearted man lifted his eyes to the heights seeing the face of a girl in every moonlit rock and in every wayside pool.
As he entered the office he found them all waiting for him—Dan and Biddy in their best dress, and Eldred with a supercilious half-grin, half-scowl on his face.
Clement nodded at him, but said "Hello" to Dan and "Good-evening" to Biddy. Conly, his trusted, discreet cashier, was at his desk, and the office was dimly lit with a single electric bulb.
Dan and Biddy greeted him cautiously, for Eldred had filled their simple souls with suspicion. "He wants to compromise. He's afraid of our suit against him."
As a matter of fact Dan would never put a dollar into the plan for a suit, and it had never gone beyond Eldred's talk—and yet he had made them suspicious. Dan was forced to confess that Clement was becoming an "a-ristocrat." And Biddy acknowledged that he "sildom dairkened her dure these days." They had always felt his superiority and refinement, and they rose as he entered.
He wasted no time in preliminaries. "Sit down," he said imperiously, and his face, when he turned to the light, was knotted with trouble. He sat for a moment with bent head while he strengthened his heart to a bitter and humiliating task. He began abruptly:
"Dan, you remember the time I brought the amalgam home in a vial and it had turned green?"
"I do. Yis."