“It can never be the same again; I was never the same again, nor can Ben be. It has been in the web, and its wings are broken and the gold gone. We think that under given circumstances we would not do certain things, but we don’t know. Environment, heredity, passions of various kinds, selfishness, pull us this way and that; and when we declare, as so many do, that if we were this person or that we should not do as he or she does, we simply proclaim our ignorance. There is not a man alive who knows himself to the innermost core of his being. I am a dozen men rolled into one, and the whole dozen are contemptible. I despise myself more than you can.” “Why should you say that?” “You did despise me, or came near it, a moment ago; I saw it in your manner.” “Was my manner different? I didn’t know it, and didn’t intend that it should be. But I couldn’t understand how you could keep still so long, if you knew.” “I kept still because I am a coward, and because I loved that woman. That explains everything; explains why I am here in Paradise Valley, living like a hermit. I wanted to get away, and I wanted to forget. I got away, but if one could take the wings of the morning he could never out-fly memory. I could never live happily with that woman, and I have never been able to live happily without her. When she came into my life she wrecked it. Some women are born to that fate, I suppose; and if that is so, perhaps they ought not to be blamed too severely. But I am sorry for Mary Jasper, and I am more than sorry for Ben. He was already going to the devil at a lively gait. Sibyl is one of those women whose feet take hold on hell, and she will drag him down with her, if he does not get out of her web, or is not helped out. And I’m afraid he can’t be helped out.” Clayton set out to see Davison, and have a talk with him on this disagreeable subject; but, as before when he desired to speak to Sloan Jasper, he turned back without saying anything. Davison seemed not to know what had occurred. He and Fogg went often to and from Denver, as they continued their work of exploiting Paradise Valley for the benefit of their pockets. From Denver they had brought an engineer, who had made a survey and report on the available sources of water. Behind a granite ridge, at the head of the valley, flowed Warrior River, a swift stream that wasted itself uselessly in the deep gorges that lay to the southwest. The engineer’s report showed that a tunnel cut through that ridge would pour Warrior River into Paradise Creek and water many thousands of acres of land which could not now be touched.