"You didn't tell me about a belt of country around here where the
temperature never falls to thirty-two?"
Elijah glanced hastily around the room.
"That's all right." Helen had noted the look. "We're all alone."
"What do you want?" Elijah's look was not yet wholly one of relief.
"To get a little closer."
"There's a big future in that idea. I have been thinking of forming a
land company. We can get control of the whole section." He swept his
hand over the map.
"We don't want the earth, Elijah. It would be too much work to handle
it. There wouldn't be any time for fun. We only want a goodly portion.
We want to do things, don't we?"
Elijah's eyes opened. An expression as of a revelation swept over his
face. The simple "we" thrilled him through and through. Unconsciousness
was dropping its mask and standing out in bold relief.
"We do, we do! and we will."
Helen was quite unconscious. She laughed at Elijah's enthusiasm.
"What kind of women have you lived with, I would like to know. This idea
would not have surprised you if it had come from a man."
Helen spoke in ignorance. Unconsciously she had opened Elijah's eyes
still wider. In a blinding flash, he saw Amy and Helen Lonsdale side by
side. The vision brought him face to face with his past life with Amy;
with its barren stretch, unwatered by sympathetic appreciation, only
parched and withered by the burning rays of selfish love. He had given;
but he had not received. What he had accomplished, he had accomplished
not only by himself, but in spite of a hostile influence. So long as his
work had been limited to the little patch of ground irrigated by the
developed springs of his home, Amy had offered no objections to his
enthusiasm. So far as it was possible for her, she had been interested,
almost encouraging. Even over his visions of greater things, which he
had laid before her unseeing eyes, she had smiled with acquiescence
which he mistook for appreciation. Only when the films began to grow
into material form, when the warp and woof must be gathered from others,
and the frame of the loom itself must be builded with another's aid, did
the real meaning of Elijah's dream suggest itself to Amy. Not that she
saw clearly, only intuitively, that in the carrying out of his plans he
would come in contact with others, that this contact would develop a
comparison of herself with others, that this comparison would be
unfavorable to her, and would end forever her ability to fill Elijah's
mental vision. Therefore, at the very first signs of expansion, she had
opposed the feeble barrier of her will. Elijah had no more recognized
the barrier than he had Amy's limitations which made the barrier
imperative to her. He had felt her opposition, and, without
understanding it, he had chafed against it. He had not compared her with
others, because up to this time he had not come in contact with those
who made a comparison imperative.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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