I didn't think so at all, I told her. If I had lived there all my life, I should feel about the place just as she did. Here she began to blush and distress herself. "But think how kind you have all been to me! Mr. Harshaw was here every day, after he found how ill poor Tamar was. He did so many things: he lifted her, for one thing, and that I couldn't have done to save her life. And your two visits have simply cured her! And here I am making myself a stumbling-block and ruining your husband's plans!" I said he was quite capable of taking care of himself. "Does your husband want _all_ the water?" she persisted. "Do I understand that he must have it all?" I supposed she was talking of the Snow Bank, and since she was determined we should discuss the affair in this social way, I said he would have to have a great deal; and I told her about the distance the power would have to be sent, and about the mines and the smelters, and all the rest of it, for it was no use to belittle the scheme. I had got started unintentionally, and I saw by her face that I had made an impression. It is a small-featured, rather set, colorless face, not so pretty as Tom pretended, but very delicate and pure; but now it became suddenly the face of a fierce little bigot, and enthusiast to boot. "It shall never go through,--not _that_ scheme--not if"--Then she remembered to whom she was talking, and set her lips together, and two great shiny drops stood in her eyes. "Don't, don't, you child!" I said. "Don't worry about their old scheme! If it must come it will come; but as a rule, a scheme, my dear, is the last thing that ever does go through. There's plenty of time." "But I can't give in," she said. "No; I _must_ try to hinder it all I can. I will be honest with you. I like you all; of all the strangers who have come here I never liked any people better. But your husband--must _not_--set his heart on _all_ that water! It doesn't belong to him." "Does it belong to you, dear?" "The _sight_ of it belongs to me," she said. "I will not have the place all littered up with their pipes and power-plants. Look out there! Look at that! Has any one the right to come here and spoil such a lovely thing as that?"--This is what it is to be the daughter of an artist. "And how about the other despoiler," I asked--"the young man with the pneumatic pipe?" "The 'pneumatic pipe'!" she repeated. "'Pump,' I mean. Is he to be allowed all over the place to do as _he_ pleases? His scaling-ladders are littering up the bluffs--not that they incommode the bluffs any; but if I lived here, I should want to brush them away as I would sweep the cobwebs from my walls." "I do not own the bluffs," she said in a distant, tremulous voice.