Something of the same nature he said to Jean Dabney that evening as he was walking home with her from Madame Marchande’s. He had long since told her about the cloud on the Trask name, and of his determination to dispel it; as he made no doubt it could be dispelled if he could trace his father and persuade him to return to New Hampshire, there to fight the good fight of reinstatement with half the wealth of a Colorado gold mine to back him. “I do hope you will succeed,” said the one who was to the full as sympathetic as Bromley. “You owe it to him to do your very best to find him.” “To him, and quite as much to myself,” Philip amended decisively. “While the cloud remains, it rests upon all of us who bear the Trask name. Until it is cleared away I can’t ask any right-minded woman to marry me.” They had reached the bridge over Cherry Creek and had paused to look down upon the damp sands lying dark in the starlight The young woman’s tone was merely argumentative when she said: “Don’t you think that is carrying it rather far?” “Not as I see it. The name a man gives to his wife ought not to have even a shadow of disgrace upon it. Don’t you believe that?” “Y-yes, I suppose I do,” was the half-hesitant reply. “Yet that seems frightfully sweeping, when you come to think of it. It seems to shut out all idea of repentance and forgiveness.” “Take it home,” said Philip shortly. “Would you marry a man who had a bad record, or whose father had been accused of a crime and was still lying under that accusation?” She was still staring down at the dark sands in the creek channel. “Since the beginning of time both men and women have been forgiving worse things.” Never before in their renewed acquaintance had he felt so strongly the difference that a year’s burden of heavy responsibilities courageously taken up and carried had made in the dark-eyed young woman standing beside him. It was only at rare intervals that a flash of the old-time, teasing mockery came to the surface. He told himself that her burden had not only sobered her; it had brought her too crudely in contact with a world of compromises--ethical compromises. He remembered what Bromley had said about the double standard of morals, and the part good women played in maintaining or condoning it, and the recollection brought a bitter taste in his mouth. “If women like you take that attitude, what is the use of a man’s trying to keep his record clean?” he demanded. “Dear me! How savagely righteous you can be!” she exclaimed with a little laugh. Then she cleared the air with a plain-spoken declaration that served to increase the aloes taste in his mouth: “I suppose I am like other women. When the time comes--if it ever does come--that I think enough of a man to marry him, I shan’t ask what he has been; only what he is and means to be.”