“But,” MacRae continued after a momentary hesitation, “that is not what I came here to say.  Talk—­talk’s cheap.  I would rather not talk about these things, or think of them, now.  I want to buy this land from you if you are willing to sell.  That’s all.”

Gower scarcely seemed to hear him.  He was nursing his heavy chin with one hand, looking at MacRae with a curious concentration, looking at him and seeing something far beyond.

“Hell; it is a true indictment, up to a certain point,” he said at last.  “What a curse misunderstanding is—­and pride!  By God, I have envied your father, MacRae, many a time.  I struck him an ugly blow once.  Yes.  I was young and hot-headed, and I was burning with jealousy.  But I did him a good turn at that, I think.  I—­oh, well, maybe you wouldn’t understand.  I suppose you wouldn’t believe me if I say I didn’t swoop down on him every time I got a chance; that I didn’t bushwhack—­no matter if he believed I did.”

“No?” MacRae said incredulously.  “You didn’t break up a logging venture on the Claha when he had a chance to make a stake?  You didn’t show your fine Italian hand in that marble quarry undertaking on Texada?  Nor other things that I could name as he named them.  Why crawl now?  It doesn’t matter.  I’m not swinging a club over your head.”

Gower shook himself.

“No,” he declared slowly.  “He interfered with the Morton interests in that Claha logging camp, and they did whatever was done.  The quarry business I know nothing about, except that I had business dealings with the people whom he ran foul of.  I tell you, MacRae, after the first short period of time when I was afire with the fury of jealousy, I did not do these things.  I didn’t even want to do them.  I wish you would get that straight.  I wanted Bessie Morton and I got her.  That was an issue between us, I grant.  I gained my point there.  I would have gone farther to gain that point.  But I paid for it.  It was not so long before I knew that I was going to pay dearly for it.  I tell you I came to envy Donald MacRae.  I don’t know if he nursed a disappointment—­which I came to know was an illusion.  Perhaps he did.  But he had nothing real to regret, nothing to prick, prick him all the time.  He married a woman who seemed to care for him.  At any rate, she respected him and was a mate, living his life while she did live.

“Look, MacRae.  I married Bessie Morton because I wanted her, wanted her on any terms.  She didn’t want me.  She wanted Donald MacRae.  But she had wanted other men.  That was the way she was made.  She was facile.  And she never loved any one half so much as she loved herself.  She was only a beautiful peacock preening her feathers and sighing for homage.  She was—­she is—­the essence of self from the top of her head to her shoes.  Her feelings, her wants, her wishes, her whims, her two-by-four outlook, nothing else counted.  She couldn’t comprehend anything outside of herself.  She would have made Donald MacRae’s life a misery to him when the novelty of that infatuation wore off.  The Mortons are like that.  They want everything.  They give nothing.