"Do you?"
"It's vision." There was a thrill in her low voice. Then she added,
very swiftly, "You haven't many friends, have you, Mr. Clark?"
He stared at her in surprise, and in the next instant decided that she
was right. "Why do you ask that?"
"Because you must see past most people, don't you, to what is ahead?
It is hard to put just what I mean into words."
He nodded gravely. "It is quite true that I haven't any very close
personal friends, I've moved about too quickly to make them. As for my
employees, I see them chiefly through their work."
"Then you don't really know them," she announced.
"Possibly,--but I know their results. It sounds a little inhuman,
doesn't it?"
"I think I understand." Elsie was tempted to probe this gray-eyed man
about Belding, but presently gave it up. She was conscious that while
she was talking to Clark the figure of the engineer faded into the
background.
"So there's really no one?" she went on reflectively.
"Only my mother," he said gravely, "that is, so far."
At that her heart experienced a new throb. He was infinitely removed
from any man she had ever dreamed of.
"Are you never lonely?"
"Perhaps I am," he replied with utter candor, "but I fill my life with
things which to most people are inanimate, though to me they are very
much alive. And what about yourself?"
"I don't know." Her voice was a little unsteady. She had a swift
conviction that Clark was essentially kind, as well as a great creator.
"You want this, don't you?" She held out the piece of ore while the
flakes of gold shone dully in the sun.
"Please keep it, the first bit out of what I hope will make a mine.
And I hope you will have iron as well as gold in your life."