hich London limited the Province's industries. For the first time he
was conscious of an actual interest in the success of Myrtle Forge, a
personal concern in its output. He had always visualized it as
automatically prosperous, a cause of large, inexact pride; but now it
was all near to him; he considered the competition rapidly increasing
here, and the jealous menace over seas.

His final trace of careless youth had gone; he felt the advent of the
constant apprehension that underlies all maturity, a sense of the
proximity of blind accident, evil chance, disaster. At last he was
opposed to life itself, with an immense stake to gain, to hold; in the
midst of a seething, treacherous conflict arbitrarily ended by death.
There was no cringing, absolutely no cowardice, in him. He was glad that
it was all immediately about him; he was arrogant in pressing forward to
take what he wanted from existence. He forgot all premonitions, doubt
was behind him; he no longer gauged the value of his desire for Ludowika
Winscombe. She was something he would, had to, have.

David Forsythe sat across the back of a chair in Howat's room as the
latter dressed in the rapidly failing light. David had smuggled his
London coat with the wired tails out to Myrtle Forge, and had the
stiffened portion now spread smoothly out on either side. His cheerful,
freshly-coloured face was troubled; he seemed constantly on the point of
breaking into speech without actually becoming audible. Howat was
thinking of Ludowika. It would happen to-night, he knew. He was at once
apprehensive and glad.

"You knew," David ventured finally, "that I'm supposed to ask Myrtle to
marry me. That is, your father and mine hoped I would. Well," he drew a
deep breath, "I don't think I shall. Of course, she is one of the
prettiest girls any one ever saw, and she's quite bright--it's wonderful
what she has picked up about the Furnace, but yet--" his speech suddenly
ran out. With an effort Howat brought himself back from his own vastly
more important concern. "Yes?" he queried, pausing with his fingers in
the buttonholes of a mulberry damask coat. "I have decided to choose, to
act, for myself," David announced; "this is a thing where every man must
be absolutely free.--Caroline can have me if she likes."

Howat could not avoid a momentary, inward flicker of amusement at David
Forsythe's absolute freedom of choice. He felt infinitely older than the
other, wiser in the circuitous my