She's right--I am afraid of it.
And she laughed at me. Nothing cowardly in her," his voice deepened.

"It is ignorance," Howat stated.

"I thought so, for a minute; you are wrong. She's had more experience
than we'd get in a thousand years. The life she knows would fix that.
She talked me into a tangled foolishness in five minutes; made me look
like a whiskered hypocrite. Nothing I said sounded real, and yet I must
be right. Suppose Harriet should turn nasty, suppose--oh, a thousand
things."

"It isn't arguable," Howat Penny agreed.

This afforded the other no consolation. "What is she to do?" he
demanded. "Mariana won't settle quietly against a wall. She told you
that. She's full of--of a sort of energy that must be at something.
Mariana hasn't the anchor of most women--respectability."

"Am I to gather that that is no longer considered admirable?" the elder
inquired. "If you gather anything you are lucky," Polder replied
gloomily. "I'm not sure about my own name. Good-night," he disappeared
abruptly.

Above, Howat slowly made his preparations for retiring, infinitely
weary. Waking problems fell from him like a leaden weight into the sea
of unconsciousness. He was relieved, at breakfast, to see Mariana come
down in a hat, with the jacket of her suit on an arm. He waited for her
to indicate the train by which she was leaving, so that he could tell
Honduras to have the motor ready; but she sat around in a dragging
silence. Polder walked up and down the room in which they were gathered.
Howat wished he would stop his clattering movement. An expression of
ill-nature deepened in Mariana; she looked her ugliest; and James Polder
was perceptibly fogged from a lack of sleep. Finally he said:

"Look here, we can't go on like this." He stopped in front of Mariana,
with a quivering face. She raised her eyebrows. "Come outside," he
begged. "What's the use?" she replied; but, at the same time, she rose.
"Don't get desperate, Howat," she said over her shoulder. "Even I can't
do any more; I can only take my shamelessness back to Andalusia." Polder
held open the screen door; and as, without her jacket, she went out,
Howat Penny had a final glimpse of the man bending at her side. Like two
fish in a net, he thought ungraciously. He was worn out by their
infernal flopping. With a determined movement of his shoulders, a fixing
of his glass, he turned to the accumulation of his papers.

Later he heard the changing gears of a moto