“I suppose so, but it’s the sinner that needs friends, not the saint. But in this Gregory matter--if you are going to be gone next week----” “I’ll write to Gregory and tell him to come in later on and we’ll talk over his case. He’s always appreciated the fact that I took care of him at the time we formed the Sand Creek Company. I’ll fix that up with him; he’ll have to be reasonable. He’s a simple old fellow and if he sees the absurdity of his claim he’ll be glad to settle.” He yawned and looked at his watch. “Dear me, it’s half-past one! Will you put out the lights?” Wayne heard his father’s door close, but he sat smoking and pondering. His interview with him had left him irritated and restless. He was well aware that Mrs. Craighill had found relief and pleasure in his company, and he smiled as he recalled her hurried flight through the pantry at his father’s approach. The incident lacked dignity, but his father’s treatment of her had lacked, too, and she was a young woman and admiration was sweet to her. The girl at the parish house stole across the smoke-dimmed horizon of his dreaming, in her gingham apron, with the towel and cup in her hands. Her friend had called her Jean--Jean, dearest of names, with its hint of Scottish mists and moors and heatherbloom; and Jean seemed the inevitable name for her, predestined of all time. Simplicity and sincerity were in the haunting tones of her voice. His ready imagination threw a bright glamour round her. She suggested all manner of pictures; perhaps it was the remembrance of her against Sargent’s masterly portrait that prompted this; at any rate she was the most vivid person he had ever known, and his memory flung him back sharply upon that first meeting, and he saw the anger in her eyes and heard her saying: “_I don’t care for your acquaintance, Mr. Wayne Craighill._” He turned off the lights impatiently and went to bed. CHAPTER XV MRS. BLAIR IS DISPLEASED Wayne went on a Saturday afternoon in November to a matinée of the Symphony Orchestra, expecting to find Wingfield, who kept close touch with the box-office in the interest of the guarantors. Not seeing his friend at once, he climbed to the gallery where Wingfield sometimes went to study the emotions of those who, he said, got more for their money than holders of first-floor seats. Wingfield again proved elusive, but Wayne sat down on the last row and gave heed to the Tannhaüser overture. His eyes roamed the audience aimlessly; he was, it seemed, the only man in the place. He was aware, as the familiar strains wove their spell upon the house, of something familiar in the dark head before him. He bent forward slightly to make sure; but there was, he told himself, but one head like that--there was no doubt of its being Jean Morley.