“You don’t mean to say, Kate, that your conversation was entirely about geology?”
“Certainly not. How could you have become imbued with an idea so absurd? We had many delightful dalliances down the romantic groves of chemistry, heart-to-heart talks on metallurgy, and once--ah, shall I ever forget it--while the dusk gently enfolded us, and I gazed into those bright, speaking, intelligent eyes of his as he bent nearer and nearer; while his low, sonorous voice in well-chosen words pictured to me the promise which fortified cement holds out to the world; that is, ignorant person, Portland cement strengthened by ribs of steel; and I sat listening breathless as his glowing phrases prophesied the future of this combination.”
Katherine closed her eyes, rocked gently back and forth, and crooned, almost inaudibly:
“‘When you gang awa, Jimmie, Faur across the sea, laddie, When ye gang to Russian lands What will ye send to me, laddie?’
I know what I shall get. It will probably be a newly discovered recipe for the compounding of cement which will do away with the necessity of steel strengthening.”
“Kate, dear, you are overdoing it. It is quite right that woman should be a mystery to man, but she should not aspire to become a mystery to her sister woman. Are you just making fun, or is there something in all this more serious than your words imply?”
“Like the steel strengthening in the cement, it may be there, but you can’t see it, and you can’t touch it, but it makes--oh, such a difference to the slab. Heigho, Dorothy, let us forsake these hard-headed subjects, and turn to something human. What have your lawyers been bothering you about? No trouble over the money, is there?”
“No. Of course, there are various matters they have to consult me about, and get my consent to this project or the other.”
“Read the letter. Perhaps my mathematical mind can be of assistance to you.”
Dorothy had concealed the letter, and did not now produce it.
“It is with reference to your assistance, and your continued assistance, that I wish to speak to you. Let us follow the example of the cement and the steel, and form a compact. In one respect I am going to imitate the ‘Consternation.’ I leave Bar Harbor next week.”