Helen watched the hunter and marveled at his simplicity. His sad and penetrating gaze was on the fire, as if in its white heart to read the secret denied him. He had said that no girl would ever love him. She imagined he might know considerably less about the nature of girls than of the forest.
"To come back to myself," said Helen, wanting to continue the argument. "You declared I didn't know myself. That I would have no self-control. I will!"
"I meant the big things of life," he said, patiently.
"What things?"
"I told you. By askin' what had never happened to you I learned what will happen."
"Those experiences to come to ME!" breathed Helen, incredulously. "Never!"
"Sister Nell, they sure will--particularly the last-named one--the mad love," chimed in Bo, mischievously, yet believingly.
Neither Dale nor Helen appeared to hear her interruption.
"Let me put it simpler," began Dale, evidently racking his brain for analogy. His perplexity appeared painful to him, because he had a great faith, a great conviction that he could not make clear. "Here I am, the natural physical man, livin' in the wilds. An' here you come, the complex, intellectual woman. Remember, for my argument's sake, that you're here. An' suppose circumstances forced you to stay here. You'd fight the elements with me an' work with me to sustain life. There must be a great change in either you or me, accordin' to the other's influence. An' can't you see that change must come in you, not because of anythin' superior in me--I'm really inferior to you--but because of our environment? You'd lose your complexity. An' in years to come you'd be a natural physical woman, because you'd live through an' by the physical."
"Oh dear, will not education be of help to the Western woman?" queried Helen, almost in despair.
"Sure it will," answered Dale, promptly. "What the West needs is women who can raise an' teach children. But you don't understand me. You don't get under your skin. I reckon I can't make you see my argument as I feel it. You take my word for this, though. Sooner or later you WILL wake up an' forget yourself. Remember."
"Nell, I'll bet you do, too," said Bo, seriously for her. "It may seem strange to you, but I understand Dale. I feel what he means. It's a sort of shock. Nell, we're not what we seem. We're not what we fondly imagine we are. We've lived too long with people--too far away from the earth. You know the Bible says something like this: 'Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.' Where DO we come from?"