Pen and Jim winced a little. There was a whole world of tragedy in Sara's mockery. He looked fat and middle-aged. His hair was graying fast. His fingers trembled a good deal although the strength in his arms still was prodigious. Yet Pen and Jim both had a sense of resentment that Sara should take his life tragedy so ill, a feeling that he was indecorous in flaunting his bitterness in their faces. As if he sensed their resentment, Sara went on sneeringly: "Easy for you two, with your youth and good looks and health to patronize me and fancy how much more decently you could die than I. I wish the two of you were chained to my inert body. How sweet and patient you would be! Bah! You weary me. Pen, will you go over to Mrs. Flynn's for the root beer she promised me?" Pen made her escape gladly. When she was out of hearing Jim said, "Sara, why do you want the building charges repudiated?" "Who said I wanted them repudiated?" asked Sara. "A tent is a poor place to hold secrets," replied Jim. "Did you come here to do me dirt, Sara? Did I ever do you any harm?" Sara turned purple. He raised himself on his elbow. "Why," he shouted, "did you destroy my chances with Pen by getting her love? You wanted it only to discard it!" CHAPTER XVII TOO LATE FOR LOVE "Honor is the thing that makes humans different from dogs--some dogs! When women have it, it is mingled always with tenderness." MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT. Jim jumped to his feet and took a stride toward Sara's couch, then checked himself. "Oh, I'm not accusing you of planning the thing!" sneered Sara. "I'd have more respect for you if you had. Pen doesn't know that I know. If I hadn't got hurt I'd probably never dreamed of it. Pen and I would have raised a family and I'd have had no time to think of you. But it didn't take more than a year of lying on my back and watching her to see that it was more than my crippled condition that was changing Pen. Damn you! Why should you have it all, health and success and Pen's love? I'll get you yet, Jim Manning!" Jim stood with his arms folded fighting desperately to keep his hands off Sara. Deep in his heart Jim realized, there was none of the pity for Sara's physical condition that civilized man is supposed to feel for the cripple. Far within him was the loathing of the savage for something abnormal; the loathing that once left the physically unfit to die. Yet superimposed on this loathing was the veneer of civilization, that forces kindness and gentleness and self-denial toward the fit that the unfit may be kept alive. So Jim gripped his biceps and ground his teeth and the crippled man in the chair stared with bitter black eyes into Jim's angry gray ones. Jim fought with himself until the sweat came out on his lips, then without a word he left the tent, mounted his horse and rode back to the dam site.