“I'd been drinking a lot and was all on edge,” he volunteered further. “I feel different today. I can remember your mother driving like this. I was a boy then, and used to think she was made of ice; wondered why she didn't run away in the sun.” “Mother was very kind, really,” Honora said absently. She was relaxed against the cushions, the country dipped and spread before her in a restful brown garb; she watched Coggs' glazed hat sway against the sky. The old sense of familiarity with Jason Burrage came back: why not, since she had known him all their lives? And now, after his years away, she was the only one in Cottarsport who at all comprehended his difficulties. He was not commonplace, a strong man was never that; and, in a way, he had the quality which more than any other had made her father so notable. And he was not unpleasant so close beside her. That was of overwhelming importance in the formation of her intimate opinion of him. He had been refined by the bitterness of his early failure in California; he bore himself with a certain dignity. “What'll I do?” he demanded abruptly. For the life or her she couldn't tell him. Except for platitudes she could offer no solution against the future. Actual living, directly viewed, was like that--hopeless of exterior solution. “I don't know,” she admitted, “I wish I did; I wish I could help you.” “This money, what's it good for? I can't get my family to burn two small stoves at once; they'd die in the kitchen if they had a hundred parlors; I've bought more clothes than I'll ever wear, four high hats and so on. Not going to get married; no use for a big house, for anything more than the room I have. I get plenty to eat----” “You might do some good with it,” she suggested. The base of what she was saying, Honora realized, was that he would be as well off with his fortune given away. Yet it was unjust, absurd, for him not to get some use, pleasure, from what he had worked so extravagantly to obtain. “Somehow that wouldn't settle anything, for me,” he replied. Coggs had turned at the usual limit of her afternoon driving, and they were slowly moving back to the town. Cottar's Neck was fading into the early gloom, and a group of men stared at Jason seated in the Canderays' carriage as if their eyes were being played with in the uncertain light. “Have you thought any more about going West?” she inquired. They had stopped for his descent at Marlboro Street, and he stood with a hand on the wheel. “I had intended to go this morning.” He held her gaze steadily, and she felt a swift coldness touch her into a shiver. “Tomorrow?” This came in a spirit of perversity against her every other instinct. “Shall I?” “Would you be happier in San Francisco?” Jason Burrage made a hopeless gesture. “... for supper,” Honora found herself saying in a rush; “at six o'clock. If you aren't bound for California.”