ng to him, "I can't bear it, Jimsy! All the
years--all those splendid men, all those faithful women, 'holding hard'
against--against----"

He gathered her closer. "My Dad's the last of 'em, Skipper. He's the
last 'Wild King.' It stops with him. I told him that, and he believes
me. Do you believe me, Skipper?"

She stopped sobbing and looked up at him for a long moment, her wet eyes
solemn, her breath coming in little gasps. Then--"I do believe you,
Jimsy," she said. "_I'll never stop believing you._"

He kissed her gravely. "And now I'll show you the secret of the ring."
He took it from her and pressed a hidden spring. The clasped hands
slowly parted, revealing a small intensely blue sapphire. "That's for
'constancy,' my Dad says." He put it on her finger. "It just fits!"

"Yes. And it just fits--us, too, Jimsy. The jewel hidden ... the way we
must keep our secret. Muzzie won't let me wear it here, but I'll wear it
the minute I leave here,--and every minute of my life. It was wonderful
for your father to let us have it--when we're so young and have so long
to wait!"

"He said--you know, he was different from anything he's ever been
before, Skipper, more--more like his old self, I guess--he said it would
help us to wait."

"It will," said Honor, contentedly, tucking her hand into his again.
They sat silently then, looking out at the bright sea.

CHAPTER VII

Honor was surprised and pleased to find how little she minded living
abroad, after all. They had arrived, the boy and herself, in the months
between their secret understanding and their separation, at the amazed
conclusion that it was going to be easier to be apart until that bright
day when they might be entirely and forever together. At the best, three
interminable years stretched bleakly between them and marriage; they had
to mark time as best they could. She liked Florence, she liked the
mountainous _Signorina_, her stepfather's friend, and she liked her
work. If it had not been for Jimsy King she would without doubt have
loved it, but there was room in her simple and single-track
consciousness for only one engrossing and absorbing affection. She wrote
to him every day, bits of her daily living, and mailed a fat letter
every week, and every week or oftener came his happy scrawl from
Stanford. Things went with him there as they had gone at L. A.
High,--something less, naturally, of hero worship and sovereignty, but
a steadily rising tide of trium