“Even so. Worse than that, he is in love with Lucille, and--er--I’m very much afraid she is with him--entirely without realizing it, you know. It’s a pitiful misfortune for both of them. Of course, Lucille can never marry.” “Why do you say ‘of course’?” “With her affliction? She doesn’t dream of such a thing! Herbert has been very decent about it. I put him on his guard last summer before I left Middleboro, and he hasn’t spoken--yet. But a day may come when he will speak, and then, as I have told him, there will be trouble and a lot of needless wretchedness. That’s why I want to get Dad and sister away from Middleboro. If they are not where Bert can drop in every few minutes, it will be different.” For a time the daughter of profitable contracts did not comment on the plan, but when she did there was a touch of her father’s shrewd directness in her manner. “You are the most frightfully cold-blooded person I’ve ever met,” she told him. “If you had ever been in love yourself you wouldn’t talk so calmly about separating these two. What if Lucille is blind? There have been blind wives, and blind husbands, for that matter, since the beginning of time. You’re hard-hearted.” “No,” said David; “I am only trying to be the right kind of a brother--as I have tried to be ever since that black day years ago when old Doctor Brown told us that the little sister would never see again. And your argument falls down at the other end, too. You say, if I had ever been in love myself.... That has already happened to me, Virginia.” Her laugh was deliciously care free. “And you have never told me!” she mocked. “Does she live in Middleboro?--or maybe it’s Florida. Or have you broken all the traditions by keeping faith with a college widow?” “No, she doesn’t live in Middleboro or in Florida, and I am very certain she has never been a college widow. It’s only a pipe-dream for me as yet, but some day----” “Some day she will grow tired of waiting and marry somebody else,” was the brisk retort. “Is she pretty?” “No; that isn’t the word at all.” “Beautiful, then?” “So beautiful that I can’t be with her without going fairly dotty.” Again she laughed derisively. “You seem to have all the symptoms, and really I didn’t believe it of you, David. You have always seemed so solid and sensible.” “I am both,” he boasted gravely. Then in a quick shift to safer ground: “You told me once that you enjoyed going out on the work with your father--is there any chance that you may come to the Timanyoni this summer?” “Maybe. I liked it when I was out there last year--for some things.” “And for some other things you didn’t? What were they?” “I’d rather not talk about them. But there was one thing.... Do you know anything about Powder Can?” “Less than nothing beyond what your father has just told me. He says it’s a mining-camp.”