Carter took the pitcher of water to Mrs. King without touching a drop of it and helped her to strain the fern bits out of it through a handkerchief before she began to give it to her husband in spoonfuls. With the first sip he ceased his uneasy murmuring and she smiled up at the boy. "Thank you, Carter. It's very splendid of you. Won't you take a sip for yourself?" Carter said he did not need it. "You do look fresher, really. You've stood this thing extraordinarily well. Did you give Honor some?" "She would take only a taste." Madeline King's eyes filled. "This is a black night for her, Carter. The thirst--and the _insurrectos_--are the least of it for Honor." Carter's eyes were bleak. "But she had to know it some time. She had to find it out, sooner or later. She couldn't have gone on with it, Mrs. King." She sighed. "I never was so astounded, so disappointed in all my life. One simply cannot take it in. He has been so absolutely steady ever since he came down,--and so fine all through this trouble! And to fail us now, when we need him so,--with Honor in such danger--" She gave her husband the last of the water and then laid on his forehead the damp handkerchief through which she had strained it. "It will break his uncle's heart. He was no end proud of him." "She had to know it some time," said Carter, stubbornly. "Is there anything I can do, Mrs. King?" "Nothing, Carter." "Then I'll go back to Honor." Something in his expression, in the way his dry lips said it, made the woman smile pityingly. "Carter, I--I'm frightfully sorry for you, too." He drew himself up with something of the old concealing pride. "I'm quite all right, thank you." She was not rebuffed. "You are quite all wretched," she said, "you poor lad, and I'm no end sorry, but--Carter, don't think this ill wind of Jimsy's will blow you any good." He flushed hotly through his strained pallor. "Ah," said the Englishwoman, gently, "you were counting on it. It's no good, Carter. It's no good. Not with Honor Carmody." Carter did not answer her in words but there was angry denial in the tilt of his head as he limped away, and she looked after him sadly. He found Honor limply relaxed in a long wicker chair. "Carter," she whispered, "I wish I'd asked you to give Jimsy a taste of that water." "You think he deserves it?" He couldn't keep the sneer out of his voice. "No," she answered him honestly. "I don't think he deserves it ... but he needs it." The words repeated themselves over and over in the other's mind. He didn't deserve it, but he needed it. That was the way--the weak, sentimental, womanish way in which she would reason it out about herself, he supposed ... Jimsy King didn't deserve her, but he needed her. He was deep in his bitter reflections when he realized that she was speaking to him.