To-day there seemed to her an added shade of effort in his briskly cheerful manner. The lines around his shrewd eyes had deepened since she first knew him, and it struck her, as she settled into the chair facing his across the flat desk, that his hair was quite gray. With the alert, keen expression taken from his face he would appear an old man.
This expression was intensified when she spoke of the war, questioned its effect on the business. It would have no effect, he assured her. The future had never been brighter; Sacramento lands were booming; fifty new settlers were going into Ripley Farmland Acres that fall. Chaos on the stock market would make the solid investment values of land even more apparent. If the war lasted a year or longer the prices of American crops would rise.
"I was wondering about the psychological effect," she murmured. Mr. Clark ran a nervous hand through his hair.
"Oh, that's all right. High prices will take care of the buyer's psychology."
She laughed.
"While you take care of the salesman's." A twinkle in his eyes answered the smile in hers, but she spoke again before he replied. "Mr. Clark, I'd like to ask you something—rather personal. What do you really get out of business?"
A quizzical smile deepened the lines around his mouth.
"Well, I got two million dollars out of it in the Portland boom! It's a game," he said after a moment. "Just a game. That's all. I've made two fortunes—you know that—and lost them. And now I'm climbing up again. Oh, if I had it to do over again, I—" He changed the words on his lips,—"I'd do the same thing. No doubt about it. We all think we wouldn't, but we would. We don't make our lives. They make us."
"Fatalist?"
"Fatalist." They smiled at each other again as she rose and held out her hand. He kept it a moment in a steadying grasp. "By the way, have you heard that your husband's around?"