“Refuse!” cried Amy.  “Refuse!  What do you mean!”

“Do you think I ought to leave the Service?” stammered Bob blankly.

“Why, it’s the best chance the Service has ever had!” said Amy, the words fairly tumbling over one another.  “You must never dream of refusing.  It’s your chance—­it’s our chance.  It’s the one thing we’ve lacked, the opportunity of showing lumbermen everywhere that the thing can be made to pay.  It’s the one thing we’ve lacked.  Oh, what a chance!”

“But—­but,” objected Bob—­“it means giving up the Service—­after these years—­and all the wide interests—­and the work——­”

“You must take it,” she swept him away, “and you must do it with all your power and all the ability that is in you.  You must devote yourself to one idea—­make money, make it pay!”

“This from you,” said Bob sadly.

“Oh, I am so glad!” cried Amy.  “Your father is a dear! it’s the one fear that has haunted me—­lest some visionary incompetent should attempt it, and should fail dismally, and all the great world of business should visit our methods with the scorn due only his incompetence.  It was our great danger!  And now it is no longer a danger!  You can do it, Bob; you have the knowledge and the ability and the energy—­and you must have the enthusiasm.  Can’t you see it?  You must!”

She leaned over, her eyes shining with the excitement of her thought, to shake him by both shoulders.  The pan of peas promptly deluged him.  They both laughed.

“I’d never looked at it that way,” Bob confessed.

“It’s the only way to look at it.”

“Why!” cried Bob, in the sudden illumination of a new idea.  “The more money I make, the more good I’ll do—­that’s a brand new idea for you!”

He rose to his feet, slowly, and stood for a moment lost in thought.  Then he looked down at her, a fresh admiration shining in his eyes.

“Yours is the inspiration and the insight—­as always,” he said humbly.  “It has always been so.  I have seemed to myself to have blundered and stumbled, groping for a way; and you have flown, swift as a shining arrow, straight to the mark.”

“No, no, no, no!” she disclaimed, coming close to him in the vigour of her denial.  “You are unfair.”

She looked up into his face, and somehow in the earnestness of her disclaimer, the feminine soul of her rose to her eyes, so that again Bob saw the tender, appealing helplessness, and once more there arose to full tide in his breast the answering tenderness that would care for her and guard her from the rough jostling of the world.  The warmth of her young body tingled in recollection along his arm, and then, strangely enough, without any other direct cause whatever, the tide rose higher to flood his soul.  He drew her to him, crushing her to his breast.  For an instant she yielded to him utterly; then drew away in a panic.

“My dear, my dear!” she half whispered; “not here!”