“But the stream isn’t dry,” she asserted, taking up his figure.  “What will you do now?  That is the question:  the only one that is ever worth asking.”

He was frowning thoughtfully again, and the words came as an unconscious voicing of vague under-depths.

“They took to the woods, the waste places, the deserts—­those men of old who didn’t understand.  Some of them went blind and crazy and died there; and some of them had their eyes opened and came back to make the world a little better for their having lived in it.  I’m minded to try it.”

She caught her breath in a little gasp which she was careful not to let him see.

“You are going away?” she asked.

“Yes; out to the ‘beyond’ in northern Arizona.  There is a new iron field out there to be prospected, and Mr. Clarkson wants me to go and report on it.  And that brings us back to business.  May I talk business—­cold money business—­to you for a minute or two?”

“If you like,” she permitted.  “Only I think the other kind of talk is more profitable.”

“Wait till you hear what I have to say in dollars and cents.  That ought to interest you.”

“Why should it—­particularly?”

“Because you are going to marry a poor man, and—­”

She turned away from him quickly and stood facing the window.  But he went on with what he had to say.

“That’s all right; I can say it to your back, just as well.  You know, I suppose, that your—­that the Farleys have lost out completely?”

“Yes,”—­to the window-pane.

“Well, a curious thing has come to pass—­quite a miraculous thing, in fact.  Chiawassee will pay the better part of its debts and—­and redeem its stock; or some of it, at least.”  He rose and stood beside her.  “Isn’t it a thousand pities that Colonel Duxbury couldn’t have held on to his shares just a little longer?”

“Yes; he is an old man and a broken one, now.”  There was a sob in her voice, or he thought there was.  But it was only the great heart of compassion that missed no object of pity.

“True; but the next best thing is to have the young woman who marries into the family bring it back with her, don’t you think?  Here is a check for what Mr. Farley’s stock would have sold for before the troubles began.  It’s made payable to you because—­well, for obvious reasons; as I have said, he lost out.”

She turned on him, and the blue eyes read him to his innermost depths.

“You are still the headlong, impulsive boy, aren’t you?” she said, not altogether approvingly.  “You are paying this out of your own money.”

“Well, what if I am?”

“If you are, it is either a just restitution, or it is not.  In either case, I can not be your go-between.”

“Now look here,” he argued; “you’ve got to be sensible about this.  There’ll be four of you, and at least two incompetents; and you’ve got to have money to live on.  I made Colonel Duxbury lose it, and—­”