for wrecking his dream, and so saw my hand in things where it never was.
But he was wrong. Bessie would have wrecked it and him too. She would
have whined and sniffled about being a poor man's wife, once she learned
what it was to be poor. She could never understand anything but a
silk-lined existence. She loved herself and her own illusions. She would
have driven him mad with her petty whims, her petty emotions. She
doesn't know the meaning of loyalty, consideration, or even an open,
honest hatred. And I've stood it all these years--because I don't shirk
responsibilities, and I had brought it on myself."

He stopped a second, staring out across the Gulf.

"But apart from that one thing, I never consciously or deliberately
wronged Donald MacRae. He may honestly have believed I did. I have the
name of being hard. I dare say I am. The world is a hard place. When I
had to choose between walking on a man's face and having my own walked
on, I never hesitated. There was nothing much to make me soft. I moved
along the same lines as most of the men I know.

"But, I repeat, I never put a straw in your father's way. I know that
things went against him. I could see that. I knew why, too. He was too
square for his time and place. He trusted men too much. You can't always
do that. He was too scrupulously honest. He always gave the other fellow
the best of it. That alone beat him. He didn't always consider his own
interest and follow up every advantage. I don't think he cared to
scramble for money, as a man must scramble for it these days. He could
have held this place if he had cast about for ways to do so. There were
plenty of loopholes. But he had that old-fashioned honor which doesn't
seek loopholes. He had borrowed money on it. He would have taken the
coat off his back, beggared himself any day to pay a debt. Isn't that
right?"

MacRae nodded.

"So this place came into my hands. It was deliberate on my part--but
only, mind you, when I knew that he was bound to lose it. Perhaps it was
bad judgment on my part. I didn't think that he would see it as an end
I'd been working for. As I grew older, I found myself wanting now and
then to wipe out that old score between us. I would have given a good
deal to sit down with him over a pipe. A woman, who wasn't much as women
go, had made us both suffer. So I built this cottage and came here to
stay now and then. I liked the place. I liked to think that now he and I
were getting to be ol