It was a random thrust, but it went home, and for a few minutes after the colonel’s departure Brant saw only the large humour of it. Truly, he had never posed before his chief as a reformed reprobate; but to be mistaken for an innocent youth, fresh from the moral environment of the well-behaved East, was mirth for the gods. Afterward, however, the pendulum swung to the opposite end of its arc. Was it quite honest that he should suffer the colonel--and others--to think better of him than the facts warranted? Obtaining money under false pretences was a crime: was it any less culpable to carry off booty of good repute in like manner? As far as his chief was concerned, Brant had come to know the colonel well enough to be sure that a most intimate knowledge of the incriminating facts would have little weight with him on the professional side. He was well satisfied with his assistant, and, unlike many employers, he was frank enough to say so. But there was a standing invitation--as yet unused--holding the door of the Bowran home open to the draughtsman. This might not be withdrawn in so many words, but--Brant put himself in the colonel’s shoes--it would probably not be renewed. From the Bowran generalities to the Langford particulars was but a step, and Brant presently began to ask himself curious questions touching the continuance of his welcome at Hollywood if the facts were known. That was a different matter, and he was not long in arriving at conclusions definite and humiliating. The judge would probably set him down as a hypocrite; Mrs. Langford would be horrified; Isabel would want him to pose as the central figure in a certain picture of mining camp life she was painting; Will would fellowship him frankly on the ground of similarity of tastes; and Dorothy--it was not so easy to prefigure her attitude, though pity and sorrow for a smashed ideal might well be the pointing of it. “That settles it!” said this latter-day flagellant, scourging himself into a fine fury of self-abnegation. “I go there no more. It is only a question of time when they will find me out, and then I should do something desperate.”