CHAPTER XXI
THE FIGHT
NOTHING worth the having is to be had without a striving which not unusually becomes strife; nothing worthy of being held is to be safeguarded without vigilance. Herein, platitudinous though the twin statements may sound, lies a basic reason why life itself is worth while. Grasp manfully and retain … they are commands laid upon him whose blood runs as nature wills it, red and strong. He is perhaps as happy a man as can be found who says, "All that I have is mine because I made it mine and have kept it mine."
At least, as the thickening dusk made its long shadows across the mountains, so Bill Steele was thinking. His be the error, if error there is; his be the blame for the calling up the shades of long laid latitudes. He squatted on his heels and smoked a contemplative pipe at the rim of the Goblet, thinking thoughts which pleased him.
Most of all he thought of Beatrice Corliss, of the girl and not the heiress, of the slim young body of her and the soft grey eyes rather than of the string of figures which might metamorphose themselves into high piled golden discs if she set her name under them, of the Beatrice who had cooked for him and laughed with him, not of her whom they called the Young Queen.
"I've poked fun at her, the Lord forgive me, long
213
