human
How did you know that I have been wanting to come up here once more before everything is changed?
gpt
I didn't know it, Brouillard denied.
human
I only knew that I wanted to get out of Gomorrah for a little while, to come up here with you and get the reek of the pit out of my nostrils.
gpt
I know, she rejoined, with the quick comprehension which never failed him.
human
It is good to be out of it, to be up here where we can look down upon it and see it in its true perspective--as a mere little impertinent blot on the landscape. It's only that, after all, Victor. See how the great dam--your work--overshadows it.
gpt
That is one of the things I hoped I might be able to see if I came here with you, he returned slowly.
human
But I can't get your point of view, Amy. I shall never be able to get it again.
gpt
You did have it once, she asserted.
human
Or rather, you had a better one of your own. Has Gomorrah changed it?
gpt
No, not Gomorrah. I could shut the waste-gates and drown the place to-morrow for all that Mirapolis, or anything in it, means to me. But something has changed the point of view for me past mending, since that first day when we sat here together and looked down upon the beginnings of the Reclamation construction camp--before Gomorrah was ever thought of.
human
I know, she said again.
gpt
But that dreadful city is responsible. It has robbed us all, Victor; but you more than any, I'm afraid.
human
No, he objected.
gpt
Mirapolis has been only a means to an end. The thing that has changed my point of view--my entire life--is love, as I have told you once before.
human
Oh, no, she protested gently, rising to take her old place, with her back to the porch post and her hands behind her. And then, still more gently:
gpt
That is almost like sacrilege, Victor, for love is sacred.
human
I can't help it. Love has made a great scoundrel of me, Amy; a criminal, if man's laws were as closely meshed as God's.
gpt
I can't believe that,
human
It is true. I have betrayed my trust. Cortwright will make good in all of his despicable schemes. Congress will intervene and the Niquoia project will be abandoned.
gpt
No, she insisted.
human
Take a good, deep breath of this pure, clean, high-mountain air and think again. Mirapolis is dying, even now, though nobody dares admit it. But it is. Tig Smith hears everything, and he told father last night that the rumor about the Quadjenàï placers is true. They are worked out, and already the men have begun to move up the river in search of new ground. Tig said that in another week there wouldn't be a dozen sluice-boxes working.
gpt
I have known about the Quadjenàï failure for the past two weeks, Brouillard put in.
human
For at least that length of time the two steam dredges have been handling absolutely barren gravel, and the men in charge of them have had orders to go on dredging and say nothing. Mirapolis is no longer a gold camp; but, nevertheless, it will boom again--long enough to let Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright and his fellow buccaneers loot it and get away.
gpt
How can you know that?
human
I know it because I am going to bring it to pass.
gpt
You?
human
Yes, I. It is the final act in the play. And my part in this act is the Judas part--as it has been in the others.
gpt
If any one else had said that of you ... but I can't believe it! I know you, Victor; I think I must have known you in the other world--the one before this--and there we climbed the heights, in the clear sunlight, together.
human
There was one thing you didn't learn about me--in that other world you speak of, he said, falling in with her allegory.
gpt
You didn't discover that I could become a wretched cheat and a traitor for love of you. Perhaps it wasn't necessary--there.
human
Tell me,