Bull’s cigar ash tumbled into his lap.

“But not ha’f so foolish as the notion that a girl has to suffer the worries and dangers of one hell of a trip on the worst sea that God ever made to try and square the things between them.”

Nancy shook her head.

“I can’t grant that,” she cried quickly.

“No?”

“I mean—­oh, psha!  Don’t you see, or does your cynical philosophy blind you?  We’re fools, maybe.  The things Providence sends us aren’t the things we’ve got a notion for.  Maybe we know better than Providence, and can’t find happiness in the things it’s handed us.  What then?  As you say, we start right in chasing happiness in the way we fancy.  It seems to me the only real happiness in life is in doing.  Ease, wealth, love, all the things folk talk and write about are just dreams of happiness that aren’t real.  Work, achievement, even if it’s wrong-headed—­that’s life; that’s happiness.  That’s why I’d say there’s nothing foolish in a girl putting up with dangers and discomforts to bring two enterprises to an understanding, calculated to promote a greater achievement for both.  It’s my little notion of snatching a bunch of happiness for myself.”

There was no laughter in Nancy’s eyes now.  They were quite serious.  Her words were alive with vehemence.  Bull was watching her intently, probing, in his searching way, the depths which her hazel eyes hinted at.  The things she said pleased him.  Her tone thrilled him.  He wanted more.

“I wonder,” he said, as he rolled the cigar across his lips in the way Nancy had laughingly pointed.  “You reckon it’s handed you happiness—­this thing?”

The girl was stirred.

“Surely,” she cried.  “Later, when things get fixed up between the Skandinavia and Sachigo, I’ll get a focus of my little share in the business of it—­the achievement.  Then I’ll get warm all through with a glow of happiness because I—­helped it along.”

Bull nodded as he watched the rising colour in the perfect cheeks.  The girl was very, very beautiful.

“Yes, I suppose you will,” he said.  Then he went on provocatively.  “But do you guess it’s always so?  I mean that always happens?  Isn’t it to do with temperament?  Now, take the forest-jacks.  Do you guess they feel happiness in a tree dropped right?  Do you guess there’s happiness for the poor fool who don’t know better than to spend his days in a forest risking his life boosting logs on the river jamb?  Do you guess there’s any sort of old joy for the feller turned adrift, when he’s getting old in the tooth, and there’s no room for him on the pay roll of the camp, in the thought that he was the best axeman the forest ever bred?  It seems like a crazy sort of happiness that way.  Happiness in achievement’s great while the achieving’s going on.  But at the finish we get right back to Nature.  And when that time comes Nature doesn’t do much to help us out.”