“Well, suppose their vein runs under your hill--through their side-line?” He stirred uneasily. “I am watching them. So far the dip is very slight. It may take a turn, or go down straight; or,” and he smiled at her again, “it may pinch out. Nothing is so uncertain as an ore vein.” “Do you think it will?” asked Ora anxiously. “No, don’t worry. I was down the other day; and did some prospecting on my own account besides. I think you’ve got a big mine.” “But suppose the vein should take a sudden dip to the right--you don’t want them burrowing under your hill----” “They won’t burrow under my hill,” he said grimly. “I should persuade them that there was an even richer vein on their left.” “Is there?” “I have reason to think so. They naturally would want to avoid the expenses of a lawsuit, and of course they would waste a lot of time sinking a shaft or driving across. Their lease would be pretty well up by the time----” “You _are_ cold-blooded! What of me? I should be making nothing, either.” “You’d make it all later on. How much do you expect to spend in Europe anyway? You must have made a thousand dollars a day since the first carload of ore was smelted.” She was on the point of replying that a woman could not have enough money in Europe, when she remembered the conspiracy to make him believe that a thousand dollars would cover the expenses of his wife. “Oh, it is merely that I don’t like being one of the pawns in your game,” she said. “You’d have all the more later on. Ore doesn’t run away.” “How _can_ you stay away from your mine? I feel--after all that you have told me!--that you are wild to get at it?” “So I am! So I am! But I said I wouldn’t and that is the end of it. I want that last year at the School.” “What shall you do with all that money--if your hill turns out to be full of gold? More, I hope, than the rest of our millionaires have done for Montana--which is exactly nothing. You might give the State a complete irrigating system.” “Good idea! Perhaps I will. But that is in the future. I want the fun first----” “Fun? It is the passion of your life, your great romance. You’ll never love a woman like that.” “Of course not.” But he was staring at her. He had a sensation of something swimming in the depths of his mind, striving to reach the surface. He changed his position suddenly and sat up. “And you?” he asked. “You have the same vision. Couldn’t you feel the same absorbing passion----” “For ore?” The scorn of her entire sex was in her voice. “Dead cold metal----” “Every molecule, every individual atom is alive and quivering----” “I am not interested in chemistry.” He still stared at her. Her cheeks were scarlet, her eyes blazing. She sprang to her feet. “Ida is the wife for you! She’ll never ask much of you and you never could hurt her, not even if you tried, she is fortunate in lacking just that which you could hurt.”