"Am I growling, Jack? Perhaps I do pretty often, but at present it is because I regret so deeply that you have to devote yourself first to Frieda and Peace and afterwards to me, when you have needed all your time and energy for your political work. If you are defeated I shall always feel responsible."
"Vain of you, don't you think?" Jack answered. "Besides, Jim Colter, you are well enough now for us to talk of something that I have been thinking of for a long time. Never have you confessed to me or to any one else, so far as I know, how in the world you happened to be so seriously hurt. In the first place, what brought you to town on that especial afternoon when you were supposed to be miles away attending to some business connected with the ranch? Then arriving there, how did you manage to get into the midst of a rough-and-tumble fight? Billy Preston did tell me this much. But I presume you must have ordered him to keep quiet, else he would not have been so non-committal."
Jim Colter stared at the opposite wall rather than toward the figure of the girl sitting near him, or through either of the two large windows with wide outlooks over the Rainbow ranch. It was mid-afternoon of an early autumn day with a faint haze in the air, unusual in the prairie country.
"I don't believe I feel equal to talking, Jack, not just at present, or for any length of time," he answered a trifle uneasily. "Perhaps I'd better try to sleep."
"Very well," Jacqueline Kent agreed, smiling and at the same time with a serious expression in her eyes. "But, Jim, when you wake you might as well decide to tell me the truth. Don't you suppose I have guessed the greater part of it?"
There was a silence for some time in the big room, Jim Colter closing his eyes, Jack staring out the window at the familiar scenes she loved.
By and by, when he did not believe she was aware of what he was doing, Jim opened his eyes and stared at his companion's profile.
Jack looked more fatigued than he often remembered to have seen her; she had less color, less her old suggestion of vitality. There were circles under her eyes, little hollows in her cheeks. Yet she did not look ill and one could scarcely marvel at the change in her after the past trying months, first the strain of her effort at electioneering on her own behalf, and more recently the tax which he and Frieda's little girl had put upon her.