"Miss Ballard will have to settle it--not you or I."
"She can't settle it. Mary is a dreamer. You capture her with your
imagination--with your talk of your work--and your people and the
little gardens, and all that. And she sees it as you want her to see
it, not as it really is. But I know the deadly dullness, the
awfulness. Why, man, I spent a winter down there, at one of the
resorts and now and then we rode through the country. It was a desert,
I tell you, Poole, a desert; it is no place for a woman."
"You saw nothing but the charred pines and the sand. I could show you
other things."
"What, for example?"
"I could show you an awakened people. I could show you a community
throwing off the shackles of idleness and ignorance. I could show you
men once tied to old traditions, meeting with eagerness the new ideals.
There is nothing in the world more wonderful than such an awakening,
Bigelow. But one must have the Vision to grasp it. And faith to
believe it. It is the dreamers, thank God, who see beyond to-day into
to-morrow. I haven't wealth or position to offer Mary, but I can offer
her a world which needs her. And if I know her, as I think I do, she
will care more for my world than for yours."
He did not raise his voice, but Porter felt the force of his restrained
eloquence, as he knew Mary would feel it if it were applied to her.
And now he shot his poisoned dart.
"At first, perhaps. But when it came to building a home, there'd be
always the stigma of your past, and she's a proud little thing, Poole."
Roger winced. "My past is buried. It is my future of which we must
speak."
"You can't bury a past. You haven't even a pulpit to preach from."
Roger pushed back his chair. "I am tempted to wish," his voice was
grim, "that we were not quite so civilized, not quite so modern.
Pistols or swords would seem an easier way than this."
"I'm fighting for Mary. You've got to let go. None of her friends
want it--Gordon would never consent."
It seemed to Roger that all the whispers which had assailed him in the
days of long ago were rushing back upon him in a roaring wave of sound.
He rose, white and shaken. "Do you call it victory when one man stabs
another through the heart? Well, if this is your victory, Bigelow--you
are welcome to it."