She had sympathy and intuition, and the thought of the worn-out man lying still forever beside the gold he so long had sought affected her curiously.

Weston, who felt his heart throb painfully fast as he watched her, nodded.
"Yes," he said, "it was rather pitiful, and there was a certain ghastly irony in the situation; but, after all, as he once admitted, there was very little that gold could have given him." Ida sat silent a moment or two.

She was sorry for Grenfell, but he had, as his comrade said, gone on, and she was more concerned about the results of his discovery to those who were left behind.
"The lode," Weston added, "is all that he described it." It cost Ida an effort to sit perfectly calm while she waited for his next observation.

It was, as she recognized, only his stubborn British pride which had prevented him from declaring what he felt for her earlier, and now the obstacle that had counted for most with him had suddenly been removed.

As it happened, however, he said absolutely nothing.
"Then you and Devine and that storekeeper are prosperous men ?" she asked.
Weston laughed in a rather curious fashion, and when he spoke it was as if he felt that an explanation of his attitude were due from him.
"No," he said, "not yet.