She sat upright, bracing her hands against the edge of the table and said, almost with violence: “Don’t go. I don’t want you to go. You _mustn’t_ go.” “But, my dear little girl, it’s only for two weeks, perhaps less. I expect to be back Friday evening. I know it’s lonely for you, but you know we have to put up with a good deal on our way through this world. You’ve found that out, honey. We’ve got to have our philosophy pretty handy sometimes.” “Oh, philosophy! I haven’t got any. I only seem to have feelings.” She rose from her chair, the Colonel watching her with anxiously knit brows. Her distress at the thought of his leaving her filled him with uneasy surprise. It seemed so disproportioned to the cause. She passed round the table and came to a halt beside him. “Can’t you put it off?” she said, trying to speak in her old coaxing way. “Put it off till I go to England to visit Rosamund.” “Oh, June!” he exclaimed, hardly able to forbear laughing. “What a thing for a girl who’s lived among mining men almost all her life to suggest! You won’t go for over two months yet, and this is important. It’s about the new pumps for the two-thousand-foot level. I leave on Monday.” “Monday!” she repeated with the same air of startled alarm. “_Next_ Monday?” “Yes. If all goes well I won’t be gone two weeks. I’ll be back Friday night. I’ll bring you up some new books, and anything else you can think of. You know this is business, and there’s no fooling with Black Dan. If you were sick in bed it would be a different matter. But as it is I must go.” Without more words she turned away and went slowly back to her seat. The Colonel, worried and baffled, watched her apprehensively. He thought to prick her pride into life and said rallyingly: “I’m beginning to think you’re just a little bit spoiled. The old man’s making a baby of you. You’re just as much of a child as ever.” He looked at her with a twinkling eye, hoping to see her laugh. But she was grave, leaning languidly against the back of the chair. “I’m not as much of a child as you think,” was her answer. On the following Monday, _en route_ to the depot, the Colonel paused on the outskirts of the crowd round the stock bulletins pasted up in a broker’s window. He did not see that Jerry was on the other side of the crowd. But Jerry saw him, and through the openings between the swaying heads, eyed him warily. As the elder man turned away in the direction of the depot, Jerry backed from the edges of the crowd to watch the retreating figure. His handsome face only showed a still curiosity, but there was malevolence in his eyes. He had quietly hated the Colonel since the night of the Davenport ball and awaited his opportunity to return that blow. “Old blackguard!” he thought to himself, “I’ll be even with you soon, now!”