“Yes?”

“You’re in love with her?”

“Yes—­but I question your right to play inquisitor.”

“I haven’t any right, except my interest in Mary.  But I claim that my interest justifies the inquisition.”

“Perhaps.”

“You want to marry her?”

Roger shifted his position, and leaned forward, meeting Porter’s stormy eyes squarely.  “Again I question your right, Bigelow.”

[Illustration:  “Again I question your right.”]

“It isn’t a question of right now, Poole, and you know it.  You’re in love with her, I’m in love with her.  We both want her.  In days past men settled such things with swords or pistols.  You and I are civilized and modern; but it’s got to be settled just the same.”

“Miss Ballard will have to settle it—­not you or I.”

“She can’t settle it.  Mary is a dreamer.  You capture her with your imagination—­with your talk of your work—­and your people and the little gardens, and all that.  And she sees it as you want her to see it, not as it really is.  But I know the deadly dullness, the awfulness.  Why, man, I spent a winter down there, at one of the resorts and now and then we rode through the country.  It was a desert, I tell you, Poole, a desert; it is no place for a woman.”

“You saw nothing but the charred pines and the sand.  I could show you other things.”

“What, for example?”

“I could show you an awakened people.  I could show you a community throwing off the shackles of idleness and ignorance.  I could show you men once tied to old traditions, meeting with eagerness the new ideals.  There is nothing in the world more wonderful than such an awakening, Bigelow.  But one must have the Vision to grasp it.  And faith to believe it.  It is the dreamers, thank God, who see beyond to-day into to-morrow.  I haven’t wealth or position to offer Mary, but I can offer her a world which needs her.  And if I know her, as I think I do, she will care more for my world than for yours.”

He did not raise his voice, but Porter felt the force of his restrained eloquence, as he knew Mary would feel it if it were applied to her.

And now he shot his poisoned dart.

“At first, perhaps.  But when it came to building a home, there’d be always the stigma of your past, and she’s a proud little thing, Poole.”

Roger winced.  “My past is buried.  It is my future of which we must speak.”

“You can’t bury a past.  You haven’t even a pulpit to preach from.”

Roger pushed back his chair.  “I am tempted to wish,” his voice was grim, “that we were not quite so civilized, not quite so modern.  Pistols or swords would seem an easier way than this.”

“I’m fighting for Mary.  You’ve got to let go.  None of her friends want it—­Gordon would never consent.”

It seemed to Roger that all the whispers which had assailed him in the days of long ago were rushing back upon him in a roaring wave of sound.