Barbara smiled. "Yes," she said, "I really think it is. We shall come to that later, but this, you see, isn't art, but something greater. It's nature untrammelled, and primeval force." "Then you, who personify reposefulness, admire force?" Barbara held her hand up. "When it accomplishes anything I do; but listen," she said. "That sound isn't the discord of purposeless haste. There's a rhythm in it. It's ordered and stately harmony." Brooke sat still, watching the little gleam in her brown eyes, until she turned again to him. "You are going to put that rope across?" she said. "I am, at least, going to try. There will, however, be difficulties." Barbara smiled a little. "There generally are. Still, I think you will get over them." She looked down again at the tremendous gap, and then met his eyes in a fashion that sent a thrill through him. "It would be worth while." "I almost think it would. Still, it is largely a question of dollars, and I have spent a good many with no great result already." "My brother-in-law will not see you beaten. He would throw in as much as the mine was worth before he yielded a point to the timber-righters." Brooke noticed the little hardness in her voice, and the sparkle in her eyes. "If he did, you would evidently sympathize with him?" "Of course, though it wasn't exactly in that sense I meant it would be worth while. One would naturally sympathize with anybody who was made the subject of that kind of extortion. If there is anything detestable, it is a conspiracy." "Still," said Brooke, reflectively, "it is in one sense a perfectly legitimate transaction." "Would you consider yourself warranted in scheming to extort money from any one?" Brooke did not look at her. "It would, of course, depend--upon, for example, any right I might consider I had to the money. We will suppose that somebody had robbed me----" "Then one who has been robbed may steal?" Brooke made a little deprecatory gesture while the blood crept to his face. "I'm afraid I have never given any questions of this kind much consideration. We were discussing the country." Barbara laughed. "Of course. I ought to have remembered. You are so horribly afraid of betraying your sentiments in England that you would almost prefer folks to believe you hadn't any. I am, however, going to venture on dangerous ground again. I think the country is having an effect on you. You have changed considerably since I met you at the ranch." "It is possible," and Brooke met her gaze with a little smile in his eyes. "Still, I am not quite sure it was altogether the fault of the country." Barbara looked down at the canyon. "Isn't that a little ambiguous?" "Well," said Brooke, reflectively, "it is, at least, rather a stretching of the simile, but I saw you first clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, in the midst of a frothing river--and I am not quite sure that you were right when you said it was not a sword you brought me."