She took his arm and with all the gentleness in the world led him from the room, motioning to me with one hand to keep my seat. When they had gone I removed the cloth from the portrait on the easel and took a good look at it. It was the picture of a gentleman, surely. While I was looking at it, and wondering about the man, Mrs. Dround came back into the room and stood at my side. "It is good, isn't it?" "Yes," I admitted reluctantly, thinking it was only too good. As I replaced the cloth over the picture, I noticed that her lips were drawn tight as if she suffered. I had read a part of their story in that pathetic little way in which she had led her husband from the room. "So you have started," she said soon, turning away from the picture. "How are you getting on? Tell me everything!" When she had the situation before her, she remarked:-- "Now is the time to take the next step, and for that you need Mr. Dround's help." "Exactly. These separate plants must be taken over, a holding company incorporated, and the whole financed. It can be done if--" "If Mr. Dround will consent," she finished my sentence, "and give his aid in raising the money?" Her shrewdness, immediate comprehension, roused my admiration. But what was her interest in the scheme? As Sarah had told me, it was generally believed that Jane Dround had a large fortune in her own right. Why should she bother with the packing business? She might spend her time more agreeably picking up Italian marbles. Her next words partly answered my wonder:-- "Of course, he will see this, and will consent; or prepare to lose everything." I nodded. "I don't like to pull out of things," she said slowly. "Mr. Dround is in such poor health," I objected. "This is not his fight: it is yours. All that he can do is to give you your first support. Leave that to me. Tell me what you will do with this corporation--what next?" She was seated in a little chair, resting her dark head upon her hands. Her eyes read my face as I spoke. Again, as the other time when we had spoken in the garden, I felt as though lifted suddenly on the wings of a strong will. At a bound my mind swept up to meet her mind. On the shelf near by there was a large atlas. I took it down, and placing it on the rug at our feet, turned the leaves until I came to the plate of the United States. "Come here. Look there!" I said, indicating the entire eastern third of the map with a sweep of my hand. "There is nothing for us that way to be had. We could never get to the seaboard. The others own that territory." The map was streaked with lines of railroad running like the currents of a great river from the broad prairies of the Dakotas, across the upper Mississippi Valley, around the curve of the Great Lakes, eastward to the Atlantic seaboard.