feeling, concealed beneath her commonplace daily aspect.

Myrtle and David joined them, and he left, resumed his place at the high
desk in the counting house. Strangely his energy of being communicated
itself to the prosaic work before him. It was, he suddenly felt,
important for him to master the processes of Myrtle Forge; it would not
do for him to remain merely irresponsible, a juvenile appendage to the
Penny iron. He would need all the position, the weight, he could assume;
and money of his own. He found a savage pleasure in recording every
detail put before him. He compared the value of pig metal, the cost of
charcoal, wages, with the return of the blooms and anconies they shipped
to England. Howat experienced his father's indignation at the manner in
which London limited the Province's industries. For the first time he
was conscious of an actual interest in the success of Myrtle Forge, a
personal concern in its output. He had always visualized it as
automatically prosperous, a cause of large, inexact pride; but now it
was all near to him; he considered the competition rapidly increasing
here, and the jealous menace over seas.

His final trace of careless youth had gone; he felt the advent of the
constant apprehension that underlies all maturity, a sense of the
proximity of blind accident, evil chance, disaster. At last he was
opposed to life itself, with an immense stake to gain, to hold; in the
midst of a seething, treacherous conflict arbitrarily ended by death.
There was no cringing, absolutely no cowardice, in him. He was glad that
it was all immediately about him; he was arrogant in pressing forward to
take what he wanted from existence. He forgot all premonitions, doubt
was behind him; he no longer gauged the value of his desire for Ludowika
Winscombe. She was something he would, had to, have.