“One of the great Canderays,” he reiterated, contemptuously. He came very close to her. “You're not much. Here they think you.... But I've been to California, and at the Jenny Lind... in silk like a blue bird, and sing-. Nobody ever heard of the Canderays in 'Frisco, but they know Jason Burrage, Burrage who had all the bad luck there was, and then struck it rich.” He swayed perilously, and she put out a palm and steadied him. “Go back. You are not fit to be around.” Jason struck her hand down roughly. “I'm fitter than you. What are you, anyway?” He caught her shoulder in vise-like fingers. “Nothing but a woman, that's all--just a woman.” “You are hurting me,” she said fearlessly. His grip tightened, and he studied her, his eyes inhuman in a stony, white face. “Nothing more than that.” “You are very surprising,” she responded. “Do you know, I had never thought of it. And it's true; that is precisely what and all I am.” His expression became troubled; he released her, stepped back, slipped, and almost fell into the water. Honora caught his arm and dragged him to the middle of the wharf. “A dam' Canderay,” he muttered. “And I'm better, Jason Burrage. Ask them at the El Dorado, or Indian Bar; but that's gone--the early days. All scientific now. We got the dead wood on gold... cyanide.” “Come home,” she repeated brusquely, turning him, with a slight push, toward the town settled in darkness. It sent him falling forward in the direction she wished. Honora supported him, led him on. At intervals he hung back, stopped. His speech became confused; then, it appeared, his reason commenced slowly to return. The streets were empty; a lamp shone dimly on its post at a corner; she guided Jason round a sunken space. Honora had no sense of repulsion; she was conscious of a faint pity, but her energy came dimly from that feeling of obligation, inherited, she told herself once more, from her father--their essential attitude to Cottarsport. At the same time she found herself studying his face with a personal curiosity. She was glad that it was not weak, that rum had been ineffectual to loosen its hardness. He now seemed capable of walking alone, and she stood aside. Jason was at a loss for words; his lips moved, but inaudibly. “Keep away from the water,” she commanded, “or from Medford rum. And, some evening soon, come to see me.” She said this without premeditation, from an instinct beyond her searching. “I can't do that,” he replied in a surprisingly rational voice, “because I've lost my silk hat.” “There are hundreds for sale in Boston,” she announced impatiently; “go and get another.” “That never came to me,” he admitted, patently struck by this course of rehabilitation through a new high hat. “There was something I had to say to you, but it left my mind, about a--a gold fleece; it turned into something else, on the wharf.”