During the past few days Jack had pushed his tentative suit boldly but lightly. He understood that Joyce was flirting with him, but he divined that there had been moments when the tide of her emotion had swept the young woman from her feet. She was a coquette, of course, but when his eyes fell like a plummet into hers they sounded depths beneath the surface foam. At such times the beat of the surf sounded in his blood. The spell of sex, with all its fire and passion, drew him to this lovely creature so prodigal of allure. The leading couples stood for a moment's breathing space near the summit. Beneath them the squalid little town huddled in the draw and ran sprawling up the hillsides. Shaft-houses and dumps disfigured even the business street. Joyce gave a laughing little shudder. "Isn't it a horrid little hole?" Jack looked at her in surprise, but it was Moya that answered. "Oh, I don't think so, Joyce. Of course it's not pretty, but--doesn't it seem to stand for something big and--well, indomitable? Think of all the miles of tunnels and stopes, of all the work that has gone into making them." She stopped to laugh at her own enthusiasm before she added: "Goldbanks stands to me for the hope in the human heart that rises in spite of everything. It is the product of an idea." Miss Seldon gave a little lift to her superb shoulders. "You're incurably romantic, Moya. It's only a scramble for money, after all." "Don't know about that, Miss Seldon," disagreed Captain Kilmeny. "Of course it's gold they all want. But gold stands for any number of good things, tangible and abstract--success, you know, and home, and love, and kiddies, the better development of the race--all that sort of thing." "Is that what it means to the highgraders too?" Joyce let her smiling eyes rest with innocent impudence in those of the miner. Kilmeny showed no sign of discomfiture. His gaze met hers fully and steadily. "Something of that sort, I suppose." "Just what _is_ a highgrader?" Moya held her breath. The debonair lightness of the question could not rob it of its significance. Nobody but Joyce would have dared such a home thrust. Jack laughed dryly. "A highgrader is a miner who saves the company for which he works the trouble of having valuable ore smelted." "But doesn't the ore belong to the company?" "There's a difference of opinion about that. Legally it does, morally it doesn't--not all of it. The man who risks his life and the support of his family by working underground is entitled to a share of the profit, isn't he?" "He gets his wages, doesn't he?" "Enough to live on--if he doesn't want to live too high. But is that all he is entitled to? Your friend"--he waved a hand toward Verinder, puffing up the trail a hundred yards below--"draws millions of dollars in dividends from the work of these men. What does he do to earn it?" "You're a socialist," charged Joyce gayly. "Or is it an anarchist that believes such dreadful things?"