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He paid for a train ticket for New York via Toronto in a newly confident frame of mind. He was Larssen's man again. At the beginning of the journey Dean read papers and magazines and smoked away the long hours. Tiring of that eventually, he sauntered to the observation platform at the rear of the train. And there he found the preacher. There was an embarrassing silence.
From the distance, it looks cold and aloof, but underneath there's a carpet of blue gentian waiting to spring out into blossom when the sun melts off the snow-layer. I don't pay idle compliments when I say that I haven't far to look for the sun that's melting off the snow." He paused. Elaine remained silent, but Larssen's vivid metaphor went home to her.
"Then it's freed you?" "Absolutely. The divorce was Larssen's trump-card. You've fought for me far better than I could ever have fought for myself. To think of you lying there helpless, and yet battling for me! My God, but at what a cost to yourself!" "If it's freed you, dear John, nothing else matters." "It has. Now I can smash Larssen's scheme.... But what of you, what of you?"
"Is she so very beautiful, this enchantress of yours?" she queried with the velvety softness of a cat. "She is blind," answered Matheson with a quiver in his words. "Blinded for life while trying to warn me of a vitriol attack. Olive, I want you to listen without interruption while I tell you on my word of honour what are the facts underneath that vile story of Larssen's.
Dean stammered some words of thanks. This cordial greeting threw him into confusion made it so much more difficult to say what he had come to say. For a moment's respite, he asked after Larssen's little boy. "He'll pull round. The crisis is over. His constitution's weak, but he'll pull round. Money saved him.
To be dependent on a woman's mood, a woman's whim, would be Larssen's position. It galled him to the quick. The seconds that slipped by while Matheson considered were minute-long to him. If only Matheson would weaken and propose compromise! Larssen uttered no word of persuasion one way or another. He knew that, if his desire could be attained, it would be attained through silence.
She could fight through any wind or sea to Norway. Nothing had been overlooked to carry Larssen's scheme to perfect success. Save only the hand of Providence.... Fate.... For such a man as Lars Larssen there is no other antagonist he need fear. But Fate, with its little finger, can squeeze him to nothingness.
It was not sufficient that he had returned to her side. She wanted his regard, his esteem, his affection, his love. She wanted a child by him to bind them together. The tenderness with which she was looking after Larssen's little son was an outward expression of that inner hope. It was a prophecy of the future. Olaf stood for what might be.
He looked forward eagerly to the moment when he would walk into Larssen's private office and smash a fist through his hoped-for control of Hudson Bay. Until that moment, he would keep outwardly to the identity of John Rivière.
Now he was granted an intimate glimpse into the workings of his employer's mind that came to him as a positive revelation. Larssen's were no mysterious powers, but the powers that every man possessed worked at white heat and with an extraordinary swiftness and exactitude. The revelation did not sweep away the glamour; on the contrary, it increased it.
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