‘Why are you going like this?’ he asked suddenly.

She appeared to hesitate.

‘I ought not to say anything against one of your friends,’ she said with a great show of ingenuousness.  ‘But, Mrs. Murray——­’

Explosively he cut her short.  ’You know that she is not a friend of mine and that she has never been and never will be a friend of mine.  Why do you say that?’

She shrugged her shoulders and went on smiling at him.  That smile began to madden him; it appeared to speak of such an unruffled spirit when his own was in tumult.

’I beg your pardon, I’m sure.  I was merely going to say that Mrs. Murray shows too great an interest in papa.  Of course I understand her, and he doesn’t.  Dear old pops is a perfect child.  She has tricked him once; she seems to think him worth watching; she is unbearable.  So I am going to do the very natural thing and take him away from her.  Back where he belongs by the way; where we both belong.’

‘That is not true; you don’t belong anywhere but here.’  He began speaking slowly, very earnestly and with little show of emotion.  But little by little his speech quickened, his voice was raised, his words became vehement.  ’You belong here.  There is no land in the world like this, just as there is no girl like you.  Listen to me, Helen!  For your sake, for my sake—­yes, and for your father’s sake—­you must stay.  You were speaking of him; let’s think of him first.  He is like a child in that he has kept a pure, simple heart.  But he is not without his own sort of wisdom.  He knows rocks and strata and geological formation; he found gold once, and that was not just accident.  He lost, but he lost without a whimper.  He is a good sport.  He will find gold again because it is here and he knows how to find it and where to find it.’

He paused, and Helen, though with no great show of interest and no slightest indication of being impressed, waited for him to go on.

’The fault in what has occurred is less his than mine.  Knowing the sort Sanchia Murray is, I should not have given her the opportunity that day of a long talk alone with him.  But,’ his meaning was plain as he caught and held her eye, ’I was in the mood to forget Sanchia Murray and Professor Longstreet and every one else but the girl I was with.’

Helen laughed lightly, again passing the remark by as a mere compliment of the negligible order.

‘Don’t do that, Helen,’ he said gravely.  She saw that a new sort of sternness had entered into his manner.  ’I have been working, working hard not alone for myself but for you.  Desert Valley has always been to me the one spot in the world; you saw it and loved it, and since then there is no money that would buy it from me.  If it were really mine!  And I have been working night and day to make it mine.  So that some day——­’

She was not ready for this, and, though her colour warmed, she interrupted swiftly: