Again Power showed his disbelief by a scornful grimace. "I am so deeply beholden to your friendship that I claim the privilege of saying that you are talking nonsense," he said. "She vowed the fidelity to me which I gave unreservedly to her; but what sort of inconstant ideal inspired her faith, that it should be shattered to atoms by the first real test? Could I ever trust her again? If it were possible, which it is not, that some new whim drove her back to America, am I a toy dog to be whistled to heel as soon as her woman's caprice dictates? To please her father, she married Marten; to placate her father, she has gone back to Marten; to gratify some feminine impulse, she flung herself in my arms; when impulse, or duty as she calls it, again overcomes reason, she may summon her obedient slave once more. Would I run to her call? I don't know. My God! I don't know." "I'm sure you don't," was the quiet response; "nor do you know how unjust you are being to her, leaving me out of the question altogether. You are like a dismasted ship in a storm, driven this way and that by every cross sea, yet drifting hopelessly nearer a rock-bound coast. Yet men have saved their lives even in such desperate conditions. At the worst, short of death, they have scrambled ashore, bruised and maimed, but living. Now, I ask you to suspend judgment for a few days, or weeks. Enlightenment may come--it _must_ come--perhaps from a source you little dream of now. Suppose I practise what I preach, and talk of something else. I think I have whipped you out of a lethargy that was harmful, and, in so far, have done you good. But I'm not here to discuss problems of psychology which are insoluble--for the present, at any rate. Tell me something of your property, of the mine, of Bison. What delightful character-types you picked up in MacGonigal and that picturesque-looking cowboy. And how did the latter gentleman lose the thumb off his left hand? Was it a mere accident? I hope not. I rather expect to hear a page out of the real history of the wild and woolly West." Power was slightly ashamed of his outburst already. "You make me feel myself a blatant misanthropist," he said contritely. "I had no right to blaze out at you in that way. But, now you are here, you shall not escape so easily. Again, and most heartily, I thank you for coming. I realize now that what I wanted more than anything else in the world was some sympathetic ear into which to pour my griefs. Ordinarily, I am not that sort of man. I prefer to endure the minor ills of life in silence. But I have been slammed so hard this time that self-control became a torture. I think I reached the full extent of my resources when I stood by my mother's open grave today, and saw her name on the coffin. I wanted to tear my heart out with my own hands. For a few seconds I was actually insane." "MacGonigal told me how terribly shaken you were. He said you would have fallen if he had not held you up."