lied to him. I want you to tell him what my
message really meant."

"I--can't come--now," he gasped. "I can't--" he tried to raise himself
but he fell back on the pillows.

"Then give me your wallet," she said, implacably, bending over him.

"No, _no_! It isn't there--wait! By and by I'll----" but his eyes
betrayed him.

Roughly, with fierce haste, she thrust her hand into his coat pocket and
pulled out his wallet of limp leather with the initials in slimly
wrought gold letters.

"Please, Honor! Please,--let me--I'll give you--I'll find it--" he
clutched at her dress but she stepped back from the couch and he lost
his balance and fell heavily to the floor.

When she pulled out the bit of closely folded paper with a sharp sound
of triumph there came with it a thick letter which dropped on the red
tiles. He snatched at it but Honor's downward swoop was swifter. She
stood staring at it, her eyes opening wider and wider, turning the plump
letter in her hands.

"Jimsy's letter to me," she said at last in a flat, curious tone. "The
one he gave you to mail." She was not exclamatory. She was too utterly
stunned for that. She seemed to be considering a course of action, her
brows drawn. "I won't tell Jimsy; I'm--afraid of what he'd do. I'll let
him go on believing in you, if you go away."

He looked up at her from his horrid huddle on the floor, through his
bloodshot eyes, the boy who had taught her so much about books and plays
and dinners in restaurants and the right sort of music to admire, and it
seemed to him that her long known, long loved face was a wholly strange
one, sharply chiseled from cold stone.

"If you'll go away," she went on, "I won't tell him about the letter."
She was looking at him curiously, as if she had never seen him before.
"All these years I've been sorry for you because you limped. But I
haven't been sorry enough. I see now; it's--your soul that limps. Well,
you must limp away, out of our lives. I won't have you near us. You've
tried and tried to drag him down but something--somewhere--has held him
up! As soon as help comes-to-morrow--to-day--I'm going to marry him,
here, in Mexico, and I'll never leave him again as long as we live. Do
you hear?"

She turned to go, but he made a smothered, inarticulate sound and she
looked down at him, and down and down, to the depths where he lay. "You
poor--thing," she said, gently. "Oh, you poor thing!"

She ran up to Jimsy and sat down on the edge of