ith David Weatherbee. But
the best of them in his eyes was nothing more than a shadow. There was
just one woman in the world for him. That image stood for you. The whole
project revolved around you. It would be incomplete now without you."

She shrank closer against the bulwark, glancing about her with the swift
look of a creature trapped, then for a moment dropped her face in her
hands. When she tried to say something, the words would not come. Her
lips, her whole face quivered, but she could only shake her head in
protest again and again.

Tisdale waited, watching her with his upward look from under contracted
brows. "What else can you do?" he asked at last. "Your tract is too small
to be handled by a syndicate, and now that the levels of the Columbia
desert are to be brought under a big irrigation project, which means a
nominal expense to the grower, your high pocket, unimproved, will hardly
attract the single buyer. Will you, then, plat it in five-acre tracts for
the Seattle market and invite the--interest of your friends?"

She drew erect; the danger signals flamed briefly in her eyes. "My friends
can be dis-interested, Mr. Tisdale. It has only been through them, for a
long time, I have been able to keep my hold."

"There's where you made your mistake at the start; in gaining that hold.
When you conformed to their standards, your own were overthrown."

"That is not true." She did not raise her voice any; it dropped rather to
a minor note? but a tremor ran over her body, and her face for an instant
betrayed how deep the shaft had struck. "And, always, when I have accepted
a favor, I have given full measure in exchange. But there is an
alternative you seem to have overlooked."

"I understand," he said slowly, and his color rose. "You may marry again."
Then he asked, without protest: "Is it Foster?"

On occasion, during that long drive through the mountains, he had felt the
varying height and thickness of an invisible barrier, but never, until
that moment, its chill. Then Marcia Feversham called her, and she turned
to go down the deck. "I'm coming!" she answered and stopped to look back.
"You need not trouble about Mr. Foster," she said. "He--is safe."

CHAPTER XVII

"ALL THESE THINGS WILL I GIVE THEE"

Frederic had suggested a rubber at auction bridge.

Elizabeth fixed another pillow under his shoulders and moved the card
table to his satisfaction, then took a chair near the players and unfolded
h