The girl recovered herself with difficulty. She was only twenty-one, but beside this wizard it struck her that Belding looked immature. Clark had seized on her imagination. He was the dreamer and the prophet and as well a great builder under whose hands marvelous things took shape. Now she was filled with a sudden and delightful confusion, and Belding, watching her, remembered the night they had floated opposite the blockhouse while Clark's music drifted across the unruffled water. He felt good for his own job, but very helpless against the mesmeric fascination that the older man might exert if he would. And behind all this moved his intense loyalty and great admiration for his chief. "Then St. Marys has produced all you hoped for, Mr. Clark?" said Elsie. "I not only hoped but believed and worked." The answer was vibrant and steady. "Hope doesn't do very much nowadays without belief and work." He glanced at the piano. "Won't you play something?" She blushed and shook her head. "No, please do yourself." "I don't play in public and I never had a lesson in my life." "But this isn't public," she countered; "I think it's--well--rather private." He laughed, went to the piano and his fingers began to explore the keys. The others sat motionless. Elsie's eyes were fixed, not on Clark but on Belding, and in them was an unanswered question. The music was not anything she knew but the chords were compelling and she perceived in them that which this strange personality could not or did not put into words--his hopes, his courage, his inflexible will and the deep note of his power. Suddenly she recognized in him a lonely man. Her heart went out and her eyes filled with tears. Presently he looked over his shoulder. "The gods are good to me to-day." "Yes?" Her voice was very uncertain. "I've found something for which I've been looking for years past." Belding's brows furrowed. There was that in Clark's manner which baffled him. Elsie seemed more than ever dainty and desirable in this unusual setting. Had Clark seen this too? "I'm so glad." The girl's eyes were very soft. The two went home rather silently. Elsie seemed to be in a dream, and Belding had no words for that which now worked poisonously in his brain, but just so often as he yielded to the sharp pang of jealousy just so often did his faith in his chief rise in protest.