“Yes, yes.  I have said that I understand.  Do not let us discuss it . . . a moment’s weakness.  My father was a great man.”

“And so mine.”

“A struggler to the end of his days.  He fought the great lone fight—­”

“And so mine.”

“And died fighting.”

“And so shall mine.  So shall we all, we Welses.”

He shook her playfully, in token of returning spirits.  “But I intend to sell out,—­mines, Company, everything,—­and study Browning.”

“Still the fight.  You can’t discount the blood, father.”

“Why were you not a boy?” he demanded, abruptly.  “You would have been a splendid one.  As it is, a woman, made to be the delight of some man, you must pass from me—­to-morrow, next day, this time next year, who knows how soon?  Ah? now I know the direction my thought has been trending.  Just as I know you do, so do I recognize the inevitableness of it and the justness.  But the man, Frona, the man?”

“Don’t,” she demurred.  “Tell me of your father’s fight, the last fight, the great lone fight at Treasure City.  Ten to one it was, and well fought.  Tell me.”

“No, Frona.  Do you realize that for the first time in our lives we talk together seriously, as father and daughter,—­for the first time?  You have had no mother to advise; no father, for I trusted the blood, and wisely, and let you go.  But there comes a time when the mother’s counsel is needed, and you, you who never knew one?”

Frona yielded, in instant recognition, and waiting, snuggled more closely to him.

“This man, St. Vincent—­how is it between you?”

“I . . .  I do not know.  How do you mean?”

“Remember always, Frona, that you have free choice, yours is the last word.  Still, I would like to understand.  I could . . . perhaps . . .  I might be able to suggest.  But nothing more.  Still, a suggestion . . .”

There was something inexpressibly sacred about it, yet she found herself tongue-tied.  Instead of the one definite thing to say, a muddle of ideas fluttered in her brain.  After all, could he understand?  Was there not a difference which prevented him from comprehending the motives which, for her, were impelling?  For all her harking back to the primitive and stout defence of its sanity and truth, did his native philosophy give him the same code which she drew from her acquired philosophy?  Then she stood aside and regarded herself and the queries she put, and drew apart from them, for they breathed of treason.

“There is nothing between us, father,” she spoke up resolutely.  “Mr. St. Vincent has said nothing, nothing.  We are good friends, we like each other, we are very good friends.  I think that is all.”

“But you like each other; you like him.  Is it in the way a woman must like a man before she can honestly share her life with him, lose herself in him?  Do you feel with Ruth, so that when the time comes you can say, ’Thy people are my people, and thy God my God’?”