"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's absolutely free from it, now. And the very look of Jimsy is enough to show you----" But Carter had turned and was staring moodily at the decanter. "It comes so suddenly, Honor ... with such frightful unexpectedness. Remember, when we were youngsters, the World's Biggest Snake, 'Samson,'--exhibited in a vacant store on Main Street, and how keen we all were about him?" Honor kindled to the memory. "I adored him. He had a head like a nice setter's and he wasn't cold or slimy a bit!" "Remember what the man told us about his hunger? How he'd go three months without anything, and then devour twenty live rabbits and chickens and cats?" She nodded, frowning. "I know. It was awful." "But the point was the suddenness. They never knew when the hunger would seize him. The fellow said that it came like a flash. He was gentle as a lamb for weeks on end--and then it came. He'd pounce on the keeper's pet rabbit--his dog--the man himself if he were within reach. He was an utterly changed creature; he was just--an _appetite_." He stood staring somberly at the decanter. "That's the way it comes, Honor." It seemed to be getting dimmer and dimmer in the _sala_. Honor found herself wishing with all her heart for her stepfather. Stephen Lorimer would know how to answer; how to parry,--to combat this thing. She felt her own weapons clumsy and blunt, but such as they were she would use them. "But it isn't coming ever again, Carter! I tell you it isn't coming! And I want you to stop saying and thinking that it is! Now I'm going to Jimsy!"