“Because if you can’t understand it, nobody else ever will. Shall we bury it and talk about something else?” “It is dead and buried from this time on,” rejoined Hobart loyally. “But you are wrong when you say that I don’t understand. It is precisely because I do understand all you’ve admitted, and a lot more besides, that I am willing to give you all the rope you want. When a man makes seventeen different kinds of a knight-errant of himself in this cold-blooded age, he earns privileges that we ordinary mortals are bound to respect. This is my last word. Now, then, what are you going to do with yourself?” “The one thing needful has been done for me. Colonel Bowran did not wait to be told that I should probably want to disappear. He took it for granted, and got me an appointment as engineer in charge of the work on the Chipeta Ditch down in the San Juan.” “Is it a good billet?” “Good pay and a deep grave; and the latter is all I yearn for just now. The colonel says there has not yet been so much as a stake driven on the preliminary survey. If I take it I can drop out of sight and hearing for a year or two at least.” “You say ‘if.’ Of course, you will take it.” Brant took time to balance his fruit knife accurately on the edge of his plate before he made answer. “I am not so sure about that,” he said finally. “It will depend very much upon the outcome of a little talk I mean to have with a certain lady.” “Miss Langford?” “No; Miss Langford’s mother.” Hobart whistled softly. “Going to carry it up to the supreme court, are you?” “Yes, and at once. Then I shall know better what I am going to do.” “It is none of my business, George, but I am afraid the time isn’t propitious.” “So am I; but it is all the time I have.” “Oh, that doesn’t follow. And if you were to go away and stay till the edge has time to wear off--from what you have told me I fancy Dorothy will wait indefinitely.” “She will; and we shall have to wait in any event; but that isn’t the point. When I go, if I go, I must carry with me the assurance that bygones will be bygones when I come back.” “Doesn’t that smack a little of doing good that good may come?” “Perhaps. You see that, notwithstanding your good opinion, there is nothing superhuman about me. But it is more than that, Ned. I mean to marry Dorothy some day, God willing, but it sha’n’t be until I have had it out with myself, nor even then without her mother’s fullest consent and approval. This last I am willing to try to earn, but I want some assurance that it is among the possibilities.”