He felt ready now for any conflict. The need for some great immediate action pressed upon him. He did not identify it. Something he must do—he must have action—and that at once. He was glad to think how Uncle Peter would begin to rejoice in him—secretly at first, and then to praise him. He was equal to any work. He could not begin it quickly enough. That queer need to do something at once was still pressing, still unidentified.
By five he was down-stairs. The girl, fresh as a dew-sprayed rose in the garden outside, brought him breakfast of fruit, bacon and eggs, coffee and waffles. He ate with relish, delighting meantime in the girl's florid freshness, and even in the assertive, triumphant whistle of the youth busy at his tasks outside.
When he set out he meant to reach the car and go back to town at once. Yet when he came to the road over which he had loitered the day before, he turned off upon it with slower steps. There was a confusing whirl of ideas in his brain, a chaos that required all his energy to feed it, so that the spring went from his step.
Then all at once, a new-born world cohered out of the nebula, and the sight of its measured, orderly whirling dazed him. He had been seized with a wish—almost an intention, so stunning in its audacity that he all but reeled under the shock. It seemed to him that the thing must have been germinated in his mind without his knowledge; it had lain there, gathering force while he rested, now to burst forth and dazzle him with its shine. All that undimmed freshness of longing he had felt the day before-all the unnamed, unidentified, nameless desires—had flooded back upon him, but now no longer aimless. They were acutely definite. He wanted Avice Milbrey,—wanted her with an intensity as unreasoning as it was resistless. This was the new world he had watched swimming out of the chaos in his mind, taking its allotted orbit in a planetary system of possible, rational, matter-of-course proceedings.
And Avice Milbrey was to marry Shepler, the triumphant money-king.
He sat down by the roadside, well-nigh helpless, surrendering all his forces to the want.
Then there came upon him to reinforce this want a burning sense of defeat. He remembered Uncle Peter's first warnings in the mine about "cupboard love;" the gossip of Higbee: "If you were broke, she'd have about as much use for you—" all the talk he had listened to so long about marriage for money; and, at the last, Shepler's words to Uncle Peter: "I was uncertain until copper went to 51." Those were three wise old men who had talked, men who knew something of women and much of the world. And they were so irritating in their certainty. What a fine play to fool them all!
The sense of defeat burned into him more deeply. He had been vanquished, cheated, scorned, shamefully flouted. The money was gone—all of Uncle Peter's complaints and biting sarcasms came back to him with renewed bitterness; but his revenge on Uncle Peter would be in showing him a big man at work, with no nonsense about him. But Shepler, who was now certain, and Higbee, who had always been certain,—especially Shepler, with his easy sense of superiority with a woman over any poor man. That was a different matter. There was a thing to think about. And he wanted Avice Milbrey. He could not, he decided, go back without her.
Something of the old lawless spirit of adventure that had spurred on his reckless forbears urged him to carry the girl back with him. She didn't love him. He would take her in spite of that; overpower her; force her to go. It was a revenge of superb audacity. Shepler had not been sure of her until now. Well, Shepler might be hurled from that certainty by one hour of determined action.
The great wild wish narrowed itself into a definite plan. He recalled the story Uncle Peter had told at the Oldakers' about the woman and her hair. A woman could be coerced if a man knew her weakness. He could coerce her. He knew it instinctively; and the instinctive belief rallied to its support a thousand little looks from her, little intonations of her voice, little turnings of her head when they had been together. In spite of her calculations, in spite of her love of money, he could make her feel her weakness. He was a man with the power.