towns and spreading farms—­of pushing railways and young parliaments—­of roadmaking and bridgemaking—­of saw-mills and lumber camps—­detail so different from anything I have ever discussed with Arthur Delaine before.  Some of it is ugly, I know—­I don’t care!  It is like a Rembrandt ugliness—­that only helps and ministers to a stronger beauty, the beauty of prairie and sky, and the beauty of the human battle, the battle of blood and brain, with the earth and her forces.

“‘Enter these enchanted woods, ye who dare!’”

“There is a man here—­a Mr. George Anderson, of whom I told you something in my last letter—­who seems to embody the very life of this country, to be the prairie, and the railway, and the forest—­their very spirit and avatar.  Personally, he is often sad; his own life has been hard; and yet the heart of him is all hope and courage, all delight too in the daily planning and wrestling, the contrivance and the cleverness, the rifling and outwitting of Nature—­that makes a Canadian—­at any rate a Western Canadian.  I suppose he doesn’t know anything about art.  Mr. Arthur seems to have nothing in common with him; but there is in him that rush and energy of life, from which, surely, art and poetry spring, when the time is ripe.

“Don’t of course imagine anything absurd!  He is just a young Scotch engineer, who seems to have made some money as people do make money here—­quickly and honestly—­and is shortly going into Parliament.  They say that he is sure to be a great man.  To us—­to Philip and me, he has been extremely kind.  I only meant that he seems to be in place here—­or anywhere, indeed, where the world is moving; while Mr. Arthur, in Canada, is a walking anachronism.  He is out of perspective; he doesn’t fit.

“You will say, that if I married him, it would not be to live in Canada, and once at home again, the old estimates and ‘values’ would reassert themselves.  But in a sense—­don’t be alarmed—­I shall always live in Canada.  Or, rather, I shall never be quite the same again; and Mr. Arthur would find me a restless, impracticable, discontented woman.

“Would it not really be kinder if I suggested to him to go home by California, while we come back again through the Rockies?  Don’t you think it would?  I feel that I have begun to get on his nerves—­as he on mine.  If you were only here!  But, I assure you, he doesn’t look miserable; and I think he will bear up very well.  And if it will be any comfort to you to be told that I know what is meant by the gnawing of the little worm, Compunction, then be comforted, dearest; for it gnaws horribly, and out of all proportion—­I vow—­to my crimes.

“Philip is better on the whole, and has taken an enormous fancy to Mr. Anderson.  But, as I have told you all along, he is not so much better as you and I hoped he would be.  I take every care of him that I can, but you know that he is not wax, when it comes to managing.  However, Mr. Anderson has been a great help.”