The woman's face was a study in emotion.
"Oh, Alec," she cried. "You—you are doing this for—me?"
"I'm doing this, Mon, because I guess you've taught me something my eyes have been mostly blind to. I'm doing this because I'm learning things I didn't know before. One of them's this. The satisfaction of piling up a fortune has its limit. Maybe I've reached that limit. Anyway I seem to be groping around for something else—something better. Guess I'm not just clear about things yet. But—well, maybe, seeing you've made things look different, you'll help me—sort it out."
While he was speaking Monica had turned away to the window which looked out upon the beautiful stream far below them. Now she turned, and all her love was shining in her eyes.
"Oh, Alec," she cried earnestly, "I thank God that this is so. With all my heart I thank Him that this wonderful new feeling has come through—me."
After that the man's attitude changed again to the cool, yet forceful method which had made him the financial prince he was. Nor, as she noted the swift changing of his moods, could Monica help remembering that other change she had once witnessed. That moment when on the discovery of Frank's picture in her apartments he had been changed in a flash from the perfect lover to a demon of jealous fury. She felt that she had untold depths to fathom yet, before she could hope to understand the mysteries of this man's soul.
She listened to him now with all her business faculties alert. Once more he was the employer, and she the humble but willing secretary.
"I have practically finished the preliminaries of this trust," he said. "When it's fixed there'll be a bit of a shout. Bound to be. But I don't guess that matters any. What really does matter is the result, and how it's going to affect the public. My principles are sound, and—wholesome. We're not looking for big lumps of profit. We're not out to rob the world of one cent. We are out to protect—the public as well as ourselves. And the protection we both need is against those manipulators of the market like Henry Louth, and other unscrupulous speculators. In time I'm hoping to make the trusty world-wide. Meanwhile eighty per cent of the grain growers of this country, and the northwestern states across the border, are ready to come in. For the rest it's just a question of time before they are forced to. Such will be the supplies of grain from our control in a few years that we can practically collar the market. Then, when the organization is complete, and the wheat growers are universally bonded together, there's going to be no middle man, and the public will pay less for its bread, and the growers will reap greater profits. That's my scheme. I tell you right here no one's a right to come between the producer and the consumer. The man who does so is a vampire, and has no right to exist. He sits in his office and grows fat, sucking the blood of both the toiler in the field and the toiler in the city. He must go."
Monica clasped her hands in the enthusiasm with which Hendrie always inspired her. She knew he was no dreamer, but a man capable of putting into practice the schemes of his essentially commercial genius.
"Yes, yes!" she cried. "It is immense. I have always known that if only a man with sufficient courage and influence and capital could be found some such scheme might be operated. And you—you have thought of it all the time. It has been your secret. And now——"