"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 his bed and gathered him into her arms, so that his head rested on her breast. "Carter—poor Carter," she said, "is too weak to come upstairs now, but I am going to tell you the whole truth, and you are going to believe me. Listen, dearest——"
They were still like that, still talking, when Madeline King rushed into the room. "Children," she cried, "oh, my dears—haven't you heard them? Don't you know?"
"No," they told her, smiling with courteous young attention.
"They're here—the soldiers! It's all right!" She was crying contentedly. "Rich' is conscious,—he understands. My dears, we're saved! I tell you we're saved!"
"Oh, we knew that," said Honor, gravely.