Colina repeated like an automaton. "Do you think the breed was
justified in shooting my father?"

"I will not answer."

"You've got to answer--before you and I go any farther!"

"Colina, think what you're doing!" he cried. "We must not quarrel."

"I'm not quarreling," she said with an odd, flinty quietness. "I'm
trying to find out something necessary for me to know. You might as
well answer. Do you think the breed was justified in shooting my
father?"

Ambrose, baited beyond endurance, cried: "I do! He went into the man's
house and laid hands on his property. Even a breed has rights."

Colina bowed her head as if in polite acceptance. "You had better go,"
she said in soft tones more terrible than a cry. "I am sorry I ever
saw you!"

The bitterness of lovers' quarrels is in ratio with their passion for
each other. These two loved with complete abandon, consequently each
could wound the other maddeningly.

But the plant of their love, vigorous as it was, was not rooted in old
acquaintance. When the top withered under the blasts of anger there
was no store of life below. Now each was secretly terrified by the
strangeness of the being to whom he had yielded his soul.

Ambrose, wild with pain, no longer recked what he said. "You make a
man mad!" he cried. "You will not listen to reason. A thing must be
so just because you want it that way. I rack my brains for words to
save your feelings, and this is what I get! Very well, you shall have
the bald truth."

"Leave the house!" cried Colina.

"Not until I have spoken out!"

She clapped her hands over her ears.

"That is childish!" he said scornfully. "You can hear me! Throughout
the whole north your father is called the slave-driver!"

Colina faced him still and white. This was the very incandescence of
anger. "Go!" she said. "I'm done with you!"

"One thing more," he said doggedly. "The price of wheat. I shouldn't
have said anything about justice. Putting that aside, it will be good
business for you to pay the farmers their price. Otherwise you'll have
red rebellion on your hands!"

As Ambrose made for the door he met Gordon Strange coming in.

"Wait!" Colina commanded. "I want you to hear this."

It was impossible to tell from her set face what she meant to do,
Ambrose waited, hoping against hope.

"You want to know about the wheat?" said Colina.

"First, your father," said Strange, anxious and compassionate.

"He is not