CHAPTER VI

WINNIPEG BEACH

Lister went to the opera with his hosts and was moved by the music and
the feeling that he was one of a careless, pleasure-seeking crowd. For
the most part, his life had been strenuous and the crowds he knew were
rude. His home was a bare shack, sometimes built on the wind-swept
alkali plains, and sometimes in the tangled woods. From daybreak until
dusk fell, hoarse shouts, the clank of rails, the beat of heavy hammers
filled his ears, and often the uproar did not stop at dark. When a soft
muskeg swallowed the new track, he must watch, by the flaring
blast-lamps, noisy ploughs throw showers of gravel from the ballast
cars.

Labor and concentration had left their mark. Lister's muscles were hard,
but his body and face were thin. He looked fine-drawn and alert; his
talk was direct and quick. As a rule, his skin was brown, but now the
brown was gone, and the lines on his face were deeper. His injury
accounted for something and he felt the reaction from a strain he had
hardly noted while it must be borne. Although he had not altogether
hidden his bandage and his clothes were not the latest fashion, Ruth
Duveen was satisfied. Somehow he looked a finer type than the business
men in the neighboring stalls. One felt the man's clean virility and got
a hint of force.

Lister was highly strung. The music stirred his imagination, and when
the curtain went down the light and glitter, the perfume that drifted
about, the women's dress, and the society of his attractive companion