get
back to New York!"

A glow came to Jim's eyes that had not been there for years. "Gee, Pen!
You tempt me! But I'm not going to load you up with my troubles. You
have enough with Sara. Perhaps Sara will shoot Ames for me! Sara looks
like a sure-enough gunman, now. How he has changed, Pen!"

"If only you could have forgiven him enough to have written him once in
a while, Jim. After all he's been more than punished, even for the
Marathon matter or for that crazy romance about the ducal inheritance. I
realized, Jim, after I had married him, that Sara was quite capable of
the Marathon incident. Yet I wish you had forgiven him!"

"The Marathon, Pen!" cried Jim. "For heaven's sake, don't suppose that
was why I didn't write to Sara! It's the dirty trick he did in marrying
you that I'll never get over!"

"Oh, but that's not fair!" returned Pen. "He--well, anyway, he's a
cripple now and needs your help."

"I--help Sara!" exclaimed Jim. "Why I simply don't know he's living!
It's my turn now. Sara has had his innings. Desert methods are perfectly
simple and direct and I'm a desert man. You are here with me, Penelope,
and you are going to stay with me."

Iron Skull was coming back. Pen laughed. "You and Sara ought to write
movie dramas, Jim." Then she sobered. "Don't misunderstand my coming to
the dam, Jimmy. I've learned a good many things since you left me in New
York. One thing is that we can't cut our lives loose from other lives
and be a law to ourselves. Another is that any responsibility we take up
voluntarily ought to be carried to the end."

Jim looked at Pen curiously and his jaw set. She was several years
younger than Jim, yet something had come to her in the years just past
that made him in some ways feel immature. But Jim had not hungered and
thirsted for eight years in starry solitudes with one memory and one
dream to keep his heart alive, to relinquish the dream without a fight.

"Penelope," he said, "you don't know me."

Pen smiled. "I know you to the last hair in that brown thatch of yours,
Still Jim." Then she turned to Iron Skull, who was eager to have her
talk to old Suma-theek.

For some days Jim had no opportunity to continue Pen's education with
himself as textbook. He was engrossed in watching and tending the flood.
Old Jezebel enjoyed herself thoroughly for a week. She fought and
scratched at the mountainsides, but save the chafing of purple lava dust
from their sides she made no impression