A new analogy was created between Jason Bur-rage and herself: his advantage over her had broken down, they both appeared fast in untoward circumstance beyond their power to alleviate or shape. He had come back to Cottarsport in the precise manner in which she had returned from shorter but equally futile excursions. Jason had his money, which at once established necessities and made satisfaction impossible; and she had promptings, desires, that by reason of their mere being, allowed her contentment neither in the spheres of a social importance nor here in the quiet place where so much of her was rooted. As Honora Canderay gazed at her Aunt Herriot's hard, fine profile, the thought of her own, Honora Canderay's, resemblance to the returned miner carousing with the dregs of the town brought a shade of ironic amusement to her countenance. Honora left the house, walking, in the decline of a November afternoon. She had been busy in a small way, supervising the filling of camphor chests for the winter, and, intensely disliking any of the duties of domesticity, she was glad to escape into the still, cold open. Dusk was not yet perceptible, but the narrow, erratic ways of Cottars-port were filling with dear grey shadow. When, inevitably, she found herself at the harbor's edge, she progressed over a narrow wharf to its end. It had been wet, and there were patches of black, icy film; the water near by was grey-black, but about the bare thrust of Cottar's Neck it was green; the warehouses behind her were blank and deserted. She had on a cloak lined with ermine, and she drew it closer about her throat at the frigid air lifting from the bay. Suddenly a flare of color filled the somber space, a coppery glow that glinted like metal shavings on the water and turned Cottar's Neck red. Against the sunset the town was formless, murky; but the sky and harbor resembled the interior of a burnished kettle. The effect was extraordinarily unreal, melodramtic, and she was watching the color fade, when a figure wavered out of the shadows and moved insecurely toward her. At first she thought the stumbling progressions were caused by the ice: then she saw that it was Jason Burrage, drunk. He wore the familiar suit of broadcloth, with no outer covering, and a rough hat pulled down upon his fixed gaze. She stood motionless while he approached, and then calmly met his heavy interrogation. “Honora,” he articulated, “Honora Canderay, one--one of the great Canderays of Cottarsport. Well, why don't you say something? Too set up for a civil, for a----” “Don't be ridiculous, Jason,” she replied crisply; “and do go home--you'll freeze out here as you are.”