It chanced that on the same day John Spurrier spoke to Dyke Cappeze of Glory.
“When we went fishing,” he said, “I asked her whether she never felt a curiosity for the things beyond the ridges—and her eagerness startled me.”
An abrupt seriousness overspread the older face and the answering voice was sternly pitched.
“I should be profoundly distressed, sir,” said Cappeze, “to have discontent brought home to her. I should resent it as unfriendly and disloyal.”
“And yet,” Spurrier’s own voice was quickened into a more argumentative timber, “she has a splendid vitality that it’s a pity to crush.”
“She has,” came the swift retort, “a contented heart which it’s a pity to unsettle.”
The elder eyes hardened and looked out over the wall of obstinacy that had immured Dyke Cappeze’s life, but his words quivered to a tremor of deep feeling.
“I’ve given her an education of sorts. She knows more law than some judges, and if she’s ignorant of the world of to-day she’s got a bowing acquaintance with the classics. I’m not wholly selfish. If there was some one—down below that I could send her to—some one who would love her enough because she needs to be loved—I’d stay here alone, and willingly, despite the fact that it would well-nigh kill me.” He paused there and his eyes were broodingly somber, then almost fiercely he went on: “I would trust her in no society where she might be affronted or belittled. I would rather see her live and die here, talking the 131 honest, old crudities of the pioneers, than have her venture into a life where she could not make her own terms.”
“Perhaps she could make her own terms,” hazarded Spurrier, and the other snapped his head up indignantly.
“Perhaps—yes—and perhaps not. You yourself are a man of the world, sir. What would—one of your own sort—have to offer her out there?”