"I didn't know certainly whether you would come or not," was the way she began on me, and if the tone was conventional I knew well enough what lay beneath it. "Old times are old times, but----" She was merely playing with me as a cat plays with a mouse, but I could neither fight nor run until she gave me an opening. "Of course you knew I would come; why shouldn't I?" I asked, striving for some outward appearance of self-possession. "I'm sure I don't think of any reason, if you don't," she countered. "Did you know I was in Denver?" "Not in Denver, no. But I heard, some time ago, that you had come to Colorado for your health." "It seems absolutely ridiculous, doesn't it?--to look at me now. But really, I was very ill three years ago; and even now I can't go back home and stay for any length of time. You haven't been back, have you, since your--since you----" "No; I haven't been back." She was rolling her filmy little lace handkerchief into a shapeless ball, and if I hadn't known her so well I might have fancied she was embarrassed. "I can't endure to think of that dreadful time four years ago--it is four years, isn't it?" she sighed; then with a swift glance of the man-melting eyes: "You hate me savagely, don't you, Bert?--you've been hating me all these years." "No," I said, and it was the truth, up to that time. I knew that the feeling I had been entertaining for her had nothing in it so robust as hatred. There was no especial need for palliating her offense--far less, indeed, than I knew at that moment; yet I did it, saying, "You did what you thought you had to do; possibly it was what your father made you do--I don't know." She was silent for a moment before she began again by asking me what made me change my name. "My name isn't Herbert," I explained; "it never was. I think you must know that I was christened 'James Bertrand,' after my father." "I didn't know it," she denied, adding: "but you have dropped the Weyburn?" "Naturally." Again there was a little interval of silence, and as before, she was the first to break it. "So you are one of the owners of the famous Little Clean-Up? Are you very rich, Bertie?--you see, I can't give up the old name, all at once." "No; I am not rich--as riches are counted nowadays." "But you are going to be in just a little while," she put in, following the confident assertion with a query that came as suddenly as a stiletto stab: "Who is the girl, Bertie?" "What girl?"' "The girl you are going to marry. I saw her with you at the Broadway one night three weeks ago; I sat right behind you. She doesn't 'pretty' very much, to my way of thinking."