“Don’t be a fool!” she said. “Why should I? But I won’t beg for the favor of your friendship. I thought we might be friends, good friends. You could establish yourself here in the city, and we could see each other occasionally, if nothing else. I am a better woman than I used to be, a very much better woman than you will believe me to be. Mary has done that for me. And I suppose you thought I would ruin her? That shows that you never understood me.” “I couldn’t stay here in Denver!” he protested. “We might be even more than friends, some time,” she urged sweetly. “Sibyl,” he seemed about to rise from his chair, but sank back, “if I could believe you!” Her words, which he knew to be lies, were still sweet. His heart was filled with unutterable longing, not for “the touch of a vanished hand,” but for a vanished past. “I will be your friend,” he said earnestly, after a moment. “I have never been anything else, except when I was your devoted lover and foolish husband. I should like to be both again, if I could.” “Even that might be. There is such a thing as forgetting, you know.” “Not for me.” “Then a forgiving.” “Yes. Until to-night I thought I had forgiven, and I was trying to forget. I shall be glad to be your friend, Sibyl. As to establishing myself in Denver, to be near you, I will think about it. If—if there were no such thing as memory, we might still be very happy.” His under-current of common sense told him that he had again entered a fool’s paradise. “We can be happy, Curtis. You shall not leave Denver. I need more than your friendship. I need your love. I tossed it away, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I need your love, and I know you will not refuse it. You never refused me anything; whatever I asked, you gave me.” He had already given her his life! In his room at the hotel that night Clayton packed and unpacked his valise, in a state of delirious uncertainty. In the mirror he beheld his face, ghastly as that of a dead man. But, slowly, his philosophy came to his aid, “Lies, and I know it! And I am a coward! The thing for me to do is to get back into the wilderness.” The next morning he was gone. The letter which came shortly urged Justin, in a shaky hand, to stand for principle, no matter what happened, and explained that the writer felt that he must hurry home. CHAPTER VII THE COMPACT Lemuel Fogg was very much astonished when he received a call from Sibyl Dudley, who invaded the privacy of his room without taking the trouble to announce her coming. Fogg did not know much about Mrs. Dudley, except that she was a friend and patron of Sloan Jasper’s pretty daughter, and lived in Denver. He had once remarked to an acquaintance, as she passed, that she was “a stunning woman.” And he was not ready to withdraw that opinion now, when he saw her before him. Having sallied forth to conquer, she had not neglected anything that would add to her attractiveness in masculine eyes.