“The firm needs it in the business,” said he.
Her next question countered instantaneously.
“Does the firm need the money more than you do me?”
They stared at each other in the silence of the situation that had so suddenly developed. It had come into being without their volition, as a dust cloud springs up on a plain.
“You do not mean that, Hilda,” said Thorpe quietly. “It hardly comes to that.”
“Indeed it does,” she replied, every nerve of her fine organization strung to excitement. “I should be more to you than any firm.”
“Sometimes it is necessary to look after the bread and butter,” Thorpe reminded her gently, although he knew that was not the real reason at all.
“If your firm can't supply it, I can,” she answered. “It seems strange that you won't grant my first request of you, merely because of a little money.”
“It isn't a little money,” he objected, catching manlike at the practical question. “You don't realize what an amount a clump of pine like this stands for. Just in saw logs, before it is made into lumber, it will be worth about thirty thousand dollars,—of course there's the expense of logging to pay out of that,” he added, out of his accurate business conservatism, “but there's ten thousand dollars' profit in it.”
The girl, exasperated by cold details at such a time, blazed out. “I never heard anything so ridiculous in my life!” she cried. “Either you are not at all the man I thought you, or you have some better reason than you have given. Tell me, Harry; tell me at once. You don't know what you are doing.”