XXIV

INTO THE PRIMITIVE

Tested upon purely diplomatic principles, Miss Van Brock’s temper was little less than angelic, exhibiting itself under provocation only in guarded pin-pricks of sarcasm, or in small sharp-clawed kitten-buffetings of repartee.  But she was at no pains to conceal her scornful disappointment when David Kent made known his doubts concerning his moral right to use the weapon he had so skilfully forged.

He delayed the inevitable confession to Portia until he had told Loring; and in making it he did not tell Miss Van Brock to whom he owed the sudden change in the point of view.  But Portia would have greatly discredited her gift of insight if she had not instantly reduced the problem to its lowest terms.

“You have been asking Miss Brentwood to lend you her conscience, and she has done it,” was the form in which she stated the fact.  And when Kent did not deny it:  “You lack at least one quality of greatness, David; you sway too easily.”

“No, I don’t!” he protested.  “I am as obstinate as a mule.  Ask Ormsby, or Loring.  But the logic of the thing is blankly unanswerable.  I can either get down to the dirty level of these highbinders—­fight the devil with a brand taken out of his own fire; or——­”

“Or what?” she asked.

“Or think up some other scheme; some plan which doesn’t involve a surrender on my part of common decency and self-respect.”

“Yes?” she retorted.  “I suppose you have the other plan all wrought out and ready to drop into place?”

“No, I haven’t,” he admitted reluctantly.

“But at least you have some notion of what it is going to be?”

“No.”

She was pacing back and forth in front of his chair in a way that was almost man-like; but her contemptuous impatience made her dangerously beautiful.  Suddenly she stopped and turned upon him, and there were sharp claws in the kitten-buffetings.

“Do you know you are spoiling a future that most men would hesitate to throw away?” she asked.  “While you have been a man of one idea in this railroad affair, we haven’t been idle—­your newspaper and political friends, and Ormsby and I. You are ambitious; you want to succeed; and we have been laying the foundations for you.  The next election would give you anything in the gift of the State that a man of your years could aspire to.  Have you known this?”

“I have guessed it,” he said quite humbly.

“Of course you have.  But it has all been contingent upon one thing:  you were to crush the grafters in this railroad struggle—­show them up—­and climb to distinction yourself on the ladder from which you had shaken them.  It might have been done; it was in a fair way to be done.  And now you turn back and leave the plow in the furrow!”