“Wait!  We had our understanding.”  Alaire’s voice was low and vibrant.  “It was my payment for living with you, and you know it.  You gave me the reins to Las Palmas so that I’d have something to do, something to live for and think about, except—­your actions.  The ranch has doubled in value, every penny is accounted for, and you have more money to spend on yourself than ever before.  You have no reason to complain.”

Austin crushed his napkin into a ball and flung it from him; with a scowl he shoved himself back from the table.

“It was an idiotic arrangement, just the same.  I agreed because I was sick.  Dad thought I was all shot to pieces.  But I’m all right now and able to run my own business.”

“Nevertheless, it was a bargain, and it will stand.  If your father were alive he’d make you live up to it.”

“Hell!  You talk as if I were a child,” shouted her husband; and his plump face was apoplectic with rage.  “The title is in my name.  How could he make me do anything?”

“Nobody could force you,” his wife said, quietly.  “You are still enough of a man to keep your word, I believe, so long as I observe my part of our bargain?”

Ed, slightly mollified, agreed.  “Of course I am; I never welched.  But I won’t be treated as an incompetent, and I’m tired of these eternal wrangles and jangles.”

“You have welched.”

“Eh?” Austin frowned belligerently.

“You agreed to go away when you felt your appetite coming on, and you promised to live clean, at least around home.”

“Well?”

“Have you done it?”

“Certainly.  I never said I’d cut out the booze entirely.”

“What about your carousals at Brownsville?”

Austin subsided sullenly.  “Other men have got full in
Brownsville.”

“No doubt.  But you made a scandal.  You have been seen with—­women, in a good many places where we are known.”

“Bah!  There’s nothing to it.”

Alaire went on in a lifeless tone that covered the seething emotions within her.  “I never inquire into your actions at San Antonio or other large cities, although of course I have ears and I can’t help hearing about them; but these border towns are home to us, and people know me.  I won’t be humiliated more than I am; public pity is—­hard enough to bear.  I’ve about reached the breaking-point.”

“Indeed?” Austin leaned forward, his eyes inflamed.  His tone was raised, heedless of possible eavesdroppers.  “Then why don’t you end it?  Why don’t you divorce me?  God knows I never see anything of you.  You have your part of the house and I have mine; all we share in common is meal-hours, and—­and a mail address.  You’re about as much my wife as Dolores is.”

Alaire turned upon him eyes dark with misery.  “You know why I don’t divorce you.  No, Ed, we’re going to live out our agreement, and these Brownsville episodes are going to cease.”  Her lips whitened.  “So are your visits to the pumping-station.”