"Why not?" asked Willy. "It's--it's a business proposition," said Alexina. But it took a bit of courage to bring it out. "Is it?" said he. "Or I can't do it, you know." They had reached the lake and were sitting like children on the edge of the pier. The water was ruffled, the incoming waves white-crested, and the wind was soughing a little around the boat-house behind them. He was breaking bits off a twig and flinging them out to see them drift in. "Great country this," he said, "that can't produce a pebble for a fellow to fling." He looked off toward the shining, shadowy distance, where the moon gleamed against the mists. "You are"--then he changed the form of his question--"are you very rich?" "Leave the very out, and, yes, I suppose I am rich," said Alexina. "You are so--well--yourself," he said, "sometimes I find myself forgetting it." The girl swallowed once, twice, as if from effort to speak. She was looking off, too, against the far shore. "Is it a thing to have to be remembered?" then she asked. "Isn't it?" said King William, turning on her suddenly. There was a sharp harshness in his tones. "I wish to God it wasn't." She got up, and he sprang up, too, facing her. Suddenly she stamped her foot. The wind, rising to a gale now, was blowing her hair about her face and she was angry. It made her beautiful. She might have been a Valkyr, tall, wind-tossed. But the sob in her voice was human. "I've had Uncle Austen say such things to me in his fear I might let other people forget it, and a girl I cared for at school let it come between us, but I thought you--I had a right to think you were bigger. Your mother is, oh, yes, she is, and your father is. Not that I despise the other, either." She lifted her head defiantly. "It's a grand and liberating thing, though it was shackles on me in Uncle Austen's hands. I don't despise it; I couldn't; but that it should have to be remembered--" "Just so," said Willy Leroy, in his father's phrase. Her head went up again and she looked at him full, straight, then turned and fled towards the house. He ran after her, came abreast, and after the fashion he had, stooped to see into her face. "Don't go away, in from me--mad," he begged. Was he laughing? "But I am mad," she returned promptly. "But don't go in either way," he said; "stay, mad if you will, but stay. Oh, I'm not proud," he was breathing hard again, "that is--only this proud; I shall build onto my little gold of Colchis until we stand at least nearer equal--and then--" Each looked at the other, with defiance almost. She was as beautiful as Harriet Blair. "Then," said the girl, "then you'll be that far less my equal. Let me go." And she jerked her sleeve from his hand and ran into the house. CHAPTER NINE The morning after dawned sunless and chill. The sky was a pale leaden, below which darker masses of clouds scurried. The wind blew strong, steady, resistless. At breakfast they all sat shivering.