Jason took a seat facing her across an open space of darkly flowered carpet, and Honora studied him, directly critical. Against a vague background his countenance was extraordinarily pronounced, vividly pallid. His black hair swept in a soft wave across a brow with indented temples, his nose was short with wide nostrils, the lower part of his face square. His hands, scarred and discolored, rested each on a black-clad knee. She was in no hurry to begin a conversation which must either be stilted, uncomfortable, or reach beyond known confines. For the moment her daring was passive. Jason Burrage stirred his feet, and she attended the movement with thoughtful care. He said unexpectedly: “I believe I've never been in here before.” He turned and studied his surroundings as if in an effort of memory. “But I talked to your father once in the hall.” “Nothing has been changed,” she answered almost unintelligibly. “Very little does in Cot-tarsport.” “That's so,” he assented. “I saw it when I came back. It was just the same, but I----” he stopped and his expression became gloomy. “If you mean that you were different, you are wrong,” she declared concisely. “Just that has made trouble for you--you have been unable to be anything but yourself. I am like that, too. Every one is.” “I have been through things,” he told her enigmatically. “Why look--just the trip: to Chagres on the Isthmus, and then mules and canoes through that ropey woods to Panama, with thousands of prospectors waiting for the steamer. Then back by Mazatlan, Mexico City, and Vera Cruz. A man sees things.” Her inborn uneasiness at rooms, confining circumstance, her restless desire for unlimited horizons, for the mere fact of reaching, moving, stirred into being at the names he repeated. Tomorrow she would go away, find something new-- “It must have been horridly rough and dirty.” “A good many turned back or died,” he agreed tentatively. “But after you once got there a sort of craziness came over you--you couldn't wait to buy a pan or shovel. The bay was full of rotting ships deserted by their crews, a thicket of masts with even the sails still hanging to them. The men jumped overboard to get ashore and pick up gold.” She thought with a pang of the idle ships with sprung rigging, sodden canvas lumpily left on the decks, rotting as he had said, in files. The image afflicted her like a physical pain, and she left it hurriedly. “But San Francisco must have been full of life.” “You had to shout to be heard over the bands, and everything blazing. Pyramids of nuggets on the gambling tables. Gold dust and champagne and mud.” “Whatever will you find here?” She immediately regretted her query, which seemed to search improperly into the failure of his marriage. “I'm thinking of going back,” he admitted.