He brushed her generalities roughly aside. "Are you happy, Honor?"
She lifted her candid eyes to his bleak young face. "Yes, Cartie. Happier than ever before—and I've been happy all my life."
He was 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?"