ion.
Others may not see it this way. But I am giving it for what it is, and I
am giving it only because you asked it and have asked it repeatedly."

He roused himself. "Go on," he said, with evident forced lightness. "I
see your viewpoint perfectly."

"Well," she resumed, hurriedly, "you lack ambition--a real ambition. You
have ridden horses, played tennis, idled about clubs. You were a coddled
and petted child, a pampered and spoiled youth. You attended a dozen
schools, and, to use your own language, were 'canned' out of all of
them. Which about sums up your activities. You have idled your time
away, and you give every promise of continuing. I regret that I must say
that, but I regret more deeply that it is true. You have many admirable
qualities. You have the greatest of all qualities--power for sincere
love. But in the qualities which make one acceptable down here--Wait!
I'll change that. In the qualities which would make one acceptable to me
you are lacking to a very considerable degree. And it is just there that
you fill me with the greatest doubt--doubt so grave, indeed, that I
cannot--and I use the verb advisedly--cannot permit myself to like you
in the way you want me to like you."

Again he bestirred himself. "What is that, please? What is that
quality?"

"I have tried to tell you," she rejoined, patiently. "It is a really
worth-while ambition. You lack the desire to do something, the desire to
be something--a desire that ought to have been yours, should have been
yours, years ago--the thing part and parcel of our blood down here. It
may take shape in any one of a hundred different things--business
ventures; personal prospectings; pursuit of art, science; raising
cattle--anything, Stephen! But something, something which will develop a
real value, both to yourself and to your fellow-man. We have it. We have
inherited it. We got it from our grandfathers--our great-grandfathers,
in a few cases--men who wanted to know--to learn--to learn by doing. It
is a powerful force. It must be a powerful force, it must have been
strong within them, for it dragged them out of the comforts of
civilization and led them into the desert. But they found what they
sought; and in finding what they sought they found themselves also. And
what they found--"

"Was something which, having drawn them forward to the frontier, filled
them with dislike for those who remained behind?"

"If you wish to put it that way--yes." Her answer wa