For Lydia had found herself. She was a creature to whom a great love and devotion were essential as motive forces. In turn she had given this, in childish form, to her mother, to little Patience and to Levine. One by one these had been taken from her and she had struggled to give this devotion to Kent, but she could not give where there was no understanding.
And now she saw that for years it had been Billy. Billy who combined all the best of what her mother, her baby sister, and Levine had meant to her, with something greatly more—the divinity of passion—a thing she could not understand, yet that had created a new world for her.
Kent tossed his hat on the couch and shook his head at Amos. "Dave's not going to get away with it. He's got some kind of a row going with the Whiskey people and he says we might as well count him out. I don't know what to do now."
Amos groaned. "Lord, what luck!"
"Don't let it worry you," said Lydia calmly. "I made up my mind to-day that I'd go ahead and enter on that land just as other folks are doing, in the good old way. I'm going to make a farm up there, that will blot out all memory of what Mr. Levine did. But I'm going to work for it as a homesteader has to and not take any advantage through Mr. Levine's graft."
Kent looked up crossly. "Oh, Lydia, for heaven's sake, don't begin that again!"
Lydia crossed the room and put her hand on Kent's shoulder as he sat on the couch.
"Kent, look at me," she said, then, very quietly, "I'm going to homestead that land." There was no escaping the note of finality in her decision.
Kent's face whitened. He looked up steadily at Lydia. Amos and Lizzie sensed that they were spectators of a deeper crisis than they understood and they watched breathlessly. Kent rose slowly. The sweat stood on his forehead.
"You know what that means, as far as I'm concerned," he said.