Instead of laughing at this acerbic thrust, his usual reply to Philip’s censorious references to his past, Bromley grew thoughtfully silent. When he spoke, it was to say: “You may analyze women, good, bad and indifferent, until the cows come home, Philip, but you’ll never fully understand them; no man ever does, I think. That remark of yours rubs shoulders with a pretty large truth. There is a good deal of talk nowadays about the double standard. It is the women--the good women--who, unconsciously, perhaps, do the most to maintain it. Why a man who has sown a pretty generous acreage of wild oats should stand a better chance with a good woman than the other sort of man--your sort--is a question that has puzzled better brains than yours or mine. But the fact seems to remain.” “I don’t believe it,” said Philip doggedly. “All right; your belief isn’t obligatory, and we won’t quarrel over it. You asked me a question and I gave you the best answer I had in the box. Would you like to amble across Cherry Creek and have a look at my ‘mining friend’s’ cottage on the west side? It is too fine an evening to be wasted indoors. Besides, you’ll want to know the way.” Together they walked down Larimer and across the bridge, turning south in a street paralleling Cherry Creek. Three short squares brought them to a darkened cottage on a corner; a small box of a place with a pocket-handkerchief lawn and two half-grown cottonwoods for shade trees. Bromley found a key and they went in. When the gas was lighted, Philip looked around. There were three bed-rooms, a sitting-room, a small dining-room and a lean-to kitchen, all plainly but comfortably furnished. True, the carpets were worn and the furniture did not match; but there was a home-like air about the place that made it seem as if the former owners had just stepped out. “Did you buy it all, just as it stands?” Philip asked. “No, indeed. Just the empty house. I spent a whole day ransacking the second-hand shops for the fittings; didn’t dare buy anything new, naturally--that would have been a dead give-away. Like it?” “It will do well enough--considering who did it. Of course, it’s understood that you let me in with you on the expense?” Bromley did not reply at once. When he did, his answer was a conditional refusal. “No, I think not, Phil. You don’t owe Jean Dabney anything, and I do. If the time ever comes when you are in debt to her as I am, we’ll have an accounting. If you have seen all you want to, let’s go.” And he reached up to turn off the gas. In their common sitting-room that evening, while Bromley was chuckling over a magazine article which showed how little the writer really knew about the Colorado to which he had evidently made no more than a flying visit, Philip shut the _The Lady of the Aroostook_ upon a place-keeping finger to say: “I think I owe it to myself to tell you that I went to Middleton to-day and apologized.”