the hard muscles and winged heels, the essence of
strength and sunny power; Jimsy King, collapsed in the arms of Yaqui
Juan, failing her in the hour of her direst need. Jimsy, her lover, who
had promised her she should never go alive into those dark and terrible
hands ... Jimsy, who could not lift a finger now to defend her, or to
put her beyond their grasp. It became intolerable to sit still. She
sprang up and began to walk swiftly from wall to wall of the big room,
her heels tapping sharply on the smooth red tiles. Josita lifted
mournful eyes to stare at her for an instant and then returned to her
beads. Honor paused and looked out of the window. She could see nothing
through the inky blackness. Perhaps Yaqui Juan was creeping back to them
now, the canteens of precious water hung about his neck,--and perhaps he
was dead. There had been no shots, but they would not necessarily shoot
him. There were other ... awfuller ways. And Jimsy King was asleep. What
would he be like when he wakened, when he came to himself again? Could
he ever face her? Would he _live_?... And suppose she cast him
off,--then, what? She would go back to Italy, to the mountainous
_Signorina_. She would embrace her warmly and there would emanate from
her the faint odor of expensive soap and rare and costly scents, and
she would pat her with a puffy hand and say--"So, my good small one? The
sun has set, no? Ah, then, it does not signify whether one feel joy or
sorrow, so long as one feels. To feel ... that is to live, and to live
is to sing!" And she would go to work again, and sing in concert, and
take the place offered to her in the opera. And some day, when she went
for a holiday to Switzerland (she supposed she would still go on
holidays; people did, no matter what had happened to them) she would
meet Ethel Bruce-Drummond, hale and frank as the wind off the snow, and
she would say--"But where's your boy? I say, you haven't thrown him
over, have you?"

Well, could you throw over what fell away from you? Could you? She
realized that she was gripping the old ring with the thumb and fingers
of her right hand, literally "holding hard." Was this what James King
had meant? Had Jeanie King, Jimsy's firm-chinned Scotch mother who so
nearly saved her man, had she held on in times like this? Surely no
"Wild King" had ever failed his woman as Jimsy had failed her, in the
face of such hideous danger. But did that absolve her? After all (her
love and loyalty fl