"We started at the wrong end in our nation building," Dave was saying. "We started to build cities, leaving the country to take care of itself. We are finding out how wrong we were. Depend upon it, where there is a prosperous country the cities will take care of themselves. We have been putting the cart before the horse—"
But Irene's eyes were on the sunset; on the slowly fading colours of the cloudlands overhead. Something of that colour played across her fine face, mellowing, softening, drawing as it seemed the very soul to cheeks and lips and eyes. Dave paused in his speech to regard her, and her beauty rushed upon him, engulfed him, overwhelmed him in such a poignancy of tenderness that it seemed for a moment all his resolves must be swept away and he must storm the citadel that would not surrender to siege.… Only action could hold him resolute; he pressed down the accelerator until the steel lungs of his motor were drinking power to their utmost capacity and the car roared furiously down the stretches of the country road.
It was dusk when he had burnt out his violence, and, chastened and spent, he turned the machine to hum back gently to the forgotten city. Irene, by some fine telepathy, had followed vaguely the course of his emotions; had followed them in delicious excitement, and fear, and hope. She sensed in some subtle feminine way the impulse that had sent him roaring into the distances; she watched his powerful hand on the wheel; his clear, steady eye; the minute accuracy with which he controlled his flying motor; and she prayed—and did not know what or why she prayed. But a colour not all of the dying sunlight lit her cheek as she guessed—she feared—she hoped—that she had prayed that he might forget his fine resolves—that his heart might at last out-rule his head—
In the deepening darkness her fingers found his arm. The motion of the car masked the violence of her trembling, but for a time the pounding of her heart would not allow her speech.
"Dave," she said at length, "I want to tell you that I think you—that we—that I—oh! I've been very selfish and proud—"
Her fingers had followed his arm to the shoulder, and the car had idled to a standstill. "I have fought as long as I can, Dave." She raised her eyes full to his, and felt them glowing upon her in the dusk. "I have fought as long as I can," she said, "and I—I always wanted to—to lose, you know; and now—I surrender." …
Elden lost no time in facing the unpleasant task of an interview with Mrs. Hardy. It was even less pleasant than he expected.
"Irene is of age," said Mrs. Hardy, bluntly. "If she will she will. But I must tell you plainly that I will do all I can to dissuade her. Ungrateful child!" she exclaimed, in an outburst of temper, "after all these years to throw herself away in an infatuation for a cow puncher."
The thorn of Mrs. Hardy's distress, revealed as it was in those last contemptuous words, struck Dave as so ridiculous that he laughed outright. It was the second occasion upon which his sense of humour had suffered an inopportune reaction in her presence.
"Yes, laugh at me," she said, bitterly. "Laugh at her mother, an old woman now, alone in the world—the mother that risked her life for the child you are taking with a laugh—"