"So you see," he urged, "just for a square deal we've got to see some more of each other this winter.
Most likely your mind ain't made up yet—"
"But it is," she interrupted.
"I wouldn't dare permit myself to care for you.
Happiness, for me, would not lie that way.
I like you, Mr. Harnish, and all that, but it can never be more than that."
"It's because you don't like my way of living," he charged, thinking in his own mind of the sensational joyrides and general profligacy with which the newspapers had credited him—thinking this, and wondering whether or not, in maiden modesty, she would disclaim knowledge of it.
To his surprise, her answer was flat and uncompromising.
"No; I don't."
"I know I've been brash on some of those rides that got into the papers," he began his defense, "and that I've been travelling with a lively crowd."
"I don't mean that," she said, "though I know about it too, and can't say that I like it.
But it is your life in general, your business.
There are women in the world who could marry a man like you and be happy, but I couldn't.
And the more I cared for such a man, the more unhappy I should be.
You see, my unhappiness, in turn, would tend to make him unhappy.
I should make a mistake, and he would make an equal mistake, though his would not be so hard on him because he would still have his business."
"Business!" Daylight gasped.
"What's wrong with my business?
I play fair and square. There's nothing under hand about it, which can't be said of most businesses, whether of the big corporations or of the cheating, lying, little corner-grocerymen.
I play the straight rules of the game, and I don't have to lie or cheat or break my word."
Dede hailed with relief the change in the conversation and at the same time the opportunity to speak her mind.
"In ancient Greece," she began pedantically, "a man was judged a good citizen who built houses, planted trees—" She did not complete the quotation, but drew the conclusion hurriedly. "How many houses have you built?
How many trees have you planted?"
He shook his head noncommittally, for he had not grasped the drift of the argument.
"Well," she went on, "two winters ago you cornered coal—"
"Just locally," he grinned reminiscently, "just locally.
And I took advantage of the car shortage and the strike in British Columbia."
"But you didn't dig any of that coal yourself.
Yet you forced it up four dollars a ton and made a lot of money.
That was your business.
You made the poor people pay more for their coal.
You played fair, as you said, but you put your hands down into all their pockets and took their money away from them.
I know.
I burn a grate fire in my sitting-room at Berkeley.
And instead of eleven dollars a ton for Rock Wells, I paid fifteen dollars that winter.
You robbed me of four dollars.
I could stand it.
But there were thousands of the very poor who could not stand it.
You might call it legal gambling, but to me it was downright robbery."
Daylight was not abashed.
This was no revelation to him.
He remembered the old woman who made wine in the Sonoma hills and the millions like her who were made to be robbed.
"Now look here, Miss Mason, you've got me there slightly, I grant.
But you've seen me in business a long time now, and you know I don't make a practice of raiding the poor people.
I go after the big fellows.
They're my meat.
They rob the poor, and I rob them.
That coal deal was an accident.
I wasn't after the poor people in that, but after the big fellows, and I got them, too.
The poor people happened to get in the way and got hurt, that was all.