silent for a moment as if sorting out and considering the things
he might say to her. "Well, you have a marvelous effect on Jimsy. I
don't believe he's taken a drop since you've been here."

"He hasn't touched a drop since he came to Mexico, Carter,--Mr. King
told me that, and Jimsy told me himself!" Honor was a little declamatory
in her pride and he raised his eyebrows.

"Really?" He limped over to the table where the smoking things were and
the decanter of whiskey and siphon of soda. "Let me have a look...." He
picked up the decanter and held it to the light. "The last time I looked
at it, it came just to the top of the design here,--and it does yet.
Yes, it's just where it was."

"Carter! I call that spying!"

He turned back to her without temper. "I call it looking after my
friend," he said gently. "I don't suppose you've let him tell you very
much about what happened at college?"

"No, Carter. What's the use of it, now? He wrote it all to me, but the
letter must have passed me. It's a closed chapter now."

"I hope to God it will stay closed," he said, haggardly. "But I'm
afraid, Honor; I'm horribly afraid for you."

"I'm not afraid, Carter,--for myself or for Jimsy." She got up and
walked to the window; she was aware that she hated the dimness of the
_sala_; she wanted the honest heat of the sun. "Look!" she said, gladly.
Carter limped slowly to join her. Jimsy King was swinging toward them
through the brazen three o'clock glare, his Yaqui Juan by his side. They
were a sightly and eye-filling pair. They might have been done in bronze
for studies of Yesterday and To-day. "_Look_!" said Honor again. "Oh,
Carter, do you think any--any horrible dead trait--any clammy dead
hand--can reach up out of the grave to pull him down?"

Carter was silent.

A high and cleanly anger rose in the girl. "Carter, I don't want to hurt
you,--oh, I know I hurt you all the time, in one way, and I can't help
that,--I don't want to be unkind, but--are you sure it isn't because
you--care--for me that you have this hopeless feeling about Jimsy?" She
faced him squarely and made him meet her eyes. "Carter! Tell me."

His unhappy gaze struggled with her level look and slipped away. "Of
course I want you myself, Honor. I want you--horribly, unbearably, but I
do honestly feel it's wrong for you to marry Jimsy King."

"But, Carter--see how nearly his father won out! Every one says that if
his mother had lived--And his Uncle Richard! He