“But you knew it well.  George wrote long letters about the struggle you had at the canyon.  Some fight, he called it.”

“Well,” said Festing quietly, “we were up against it then.  The job was worth doing.”

“I know.  George told us how the snowslide came down and filled the head of the gorge with stones and broken trees, and wash-outs wrecked the line you built along its side.  He said it was a job for giants; clinging to the face of the precipice while you blew out and built on—­under-pinning, isn’t it?—­the first construction track.  But he declared the leaders were fine.  They were where the danger was, in the blinding rain and swirling snow—­and the boys, as he called them, would always follow you.”

Festing colored, but Helen went on:  “We were glad, when the worst was over, that he had had this training.  It was so clean a fight.”

“We were dirty enough often,” Festing objected with an effort at humor.  “When things were humming we slept in our working clothes, which were generally stained with mud and engine grease.  Then I don’t suppose you know how dissipated a man looks and feels when he has breathed the fumes of giant-powder.”

She stopped him with a half imperious glance.  “I know it’s the convention to talk of such things as a joke; but you didn’t feel that in the canyon.  Then it was a stubborn fight of the kind that man was meant to wage.  If you win in trade and politics, somebody must lose, but a victory over Nature is a gain to all.  And when your enemies are storms and floods, cheating and small cunning are not of much use.”

“That is so,” Festing agreed, smiling.  “When you’re sent to cut through an icy rock or re-lay the steel across the gap a snowslide has made, it’s obvious if you have done the job or not.  This has some drawbacks, because if you don’t make good, you often get fired.”

“But that was not what drove you on.  You must have had a better motive for making good.”

Festing felt embarrassed.  The girl was obviously not indulging a sentimental vein.  She felt what she frankly hinted at, and although he generally avoided imaginative talk, her remarks did not sound cheap or ridiculous.

“Well,” he said, “the fear of getting fired is a pretty strong incentive to do one’s best, but I suppose when one gets up against big things there is something else.  After all, one hates to be beaten.”

Helen’s eyes sparkled and she gave him a sympathetic nod.  “The hate of being beaten distinguishes man from the ape and puts him on the side of the angels.”

Then Miss Jardine came in, somewhat to the relief of Festing, who felt he could not keep up long on Helen’s plane.  Besides, he was not altogether sure he understood her last remark.

“I heard,” said Miss Jardine.  “Helen’s sometimes improving, but perhaps she was right just now.  The ape is cunning but acquiescent and accepts things as they are.  Man protests, and fights to make them better.  At least, he ought to, though one can’t say he always does.”