wonder--confess up, now--if you ever struck a man."

"Have you?" he countered.

She nodded, an angry reminiscent flash in her eyes, and waited.

"No, I have never had that pleasure," he answered slowly. "I early
learned control."

Later, irritated by his self-satisfied complacence and after listening
to a recital of how he had cornered the Klamath salmon-packing, planted
the first oysters on the bay and established that lucrative monopoly,
and of how, after exhausting litigation and a campaign of years he had
captured the water front of Williamsport and thereby won to control of
the Lumber Combine, she returned to the charge.

"You seem to value life in terms of profit and loss," she said. "I
wonder if you have ever known love."

The shaft went home. He had not kissed his woman. His marriage had been
one of policy. It had saved the estate in the days when he had been
almost beaten in the struggle to disencumber the vast holdings Isaac
Travers' wide hands had grasped. The girl was a witch. She had probed an
old wound and made it hurt again. He had never had time to love. He had
worked hard. He had been president of the chamber of commerce, mayor of
the city, state senator, but he had missed love. At chance moments he
had come upon Polly, openly and shamelessly in her father's arms, and he
had noted the warmth and tenderness in their eyes. Again he knew that he
had missed love. Wanton as was the display, not even in private did he
and Mary so behave. Normal, formal, and colourless, she was what was to