itizens of Little Rivers, weren't we? And,
Jack, every mortal of us is partly what he is born and the rest is what
he can do to bend inheritance to his will. But we can never quite
transform our inheritance and if we stifle it, some day it will break
loose. The first thing is to face what seems born in us, and you have
made a good beginning."

She gave his hands a nervous, earnest clasp and withdrew hers as she
rose. So they stood facing each other, she in the panoply of good will,
he with his heart on his sleeve. The swiftly changing pictures of the
Eternal Painter in his evening orgy seemed to fill the air with the music
of a symphony in its last measures, and her very breaths and smiles to be
keeping time with its irresistible movement toward the finale.

"I must be starting back, Jack," she said.

"And, Mary, I must learn how to master the millions. Oh, I have not the
courage of the little dwarf pine in the canyon! Mary, Mary, I calloused
my hands for you! I want to master the millions for you! I would give you
the freedom of Little Rivers and all the cities of the world!"

"No, Jack! This is my side of the pass. I shall be very happy here."

"Then I will stay in Little Rivers! I will leave the millions to the
shadows! I will stay on ranch-making, fortune-making. Mary, I love you! I
love you!"

There was no staying the flame of his feeling. He seized her hands; he
drew her to him. But her hands were cold; they were shivering.

"Jack! No, no! It is not in the blood!" she cried in the face of some
mocking phantom, her calmness gone and her words rocking with the tumult
of emotion.

"In the blood, Mary? What do you mean? What do you know that I don't
know? Do you know those shadows that I cannot understand better than
I?" he pleaded; and he was thinking of the Doge's look of pity and
challenge and of the meeting long ago in Florence as the hazy filaments
of a mystery.

"No, I should not have said that. What do I know? Little--nothing that
will help! I know what is in me, as I know what is in you. I am afraid of
myself--afraid of you!"

"Mary, I will fight all the shadows!" He drew her close to him
resistlessly in his might.

"Jack, you will not use your strength against me! Jack!"

He saw her eyes in a mist of pain and reproach as he released her. And
now she threw back her head; she was smiling in the philosophy of garden
nonsense as she cried:

"Good-by, Jack! Luck against the dinosaur! Don't press hi