“Hello, there!” he exclaimed. “You are still in town? I looked into your room and saw your bed hadn’t been slept in, so I concluded you’d taken a night train to somewhere.” “No,” Philip replied soberly; “I haven’t been out of town.” “Well, don’t rush off. Sit down and be neighborly while I get a bite of breakfast.” “No,” Philip repeated, “I’ve got to go.” Then he turned back and forced himself to look his partner in the eyes. “That matter we were talking about last night before you went to the theater: I’m not going to take that room at the Dabneys’. You are the one to go there.” The play-boy looked his surprise. “Why--what’s the matter with you, Phil? When I spoke of it last night, I thought you looked tickled purple.” “Last night was last night, and this morning is another day. Say that I don’t care to give up the stuffy luxuries of the apartment in the Alamo, if you like. Anyway, I’m not going to move; that is all there is to it.” And with this curt refusal he turned his back upon his partner and left the dining-room. XVII PASSING out through the hotel office with one thought effacing all others, namely, that companionship of any sort was not to be endured, Philip, a prey to the instinctive urge that drives the wounded animal to seek a hiding place, pulled his hat over his eyes, signalled to a passing cab and got in, telling the driver to take him to the Alamo Building. Reaching his rooms, he scribbled a note for Bromley, merely saying that he was going out of town, filled a travelling-bag, jamming things into it with little regard for long-established habits of care and orderliness, and was presently on his way to the Union Depot, urging the cab driver to haste and still more haste. By a margin of seconds he caught the South Park train for Leadville; and as the short string of top-heavy, narrow-gauge cars went swaying and lurching out over the switches in the West Denver yard, he was choosing an isolated seat in the chair-car where he could settle himself to look the catastrophic revelation of the night fairly in the face. With the scene of the revelation actually withdrawing into the distance, a vast incredulity seized him. Could it be possible that he had grown up in daily association with his father without so much as suspecting the existence of the iron-hard, desperate underman biding its time beneath an exterior so like that of other men in his walk of life as to be wholly unremarkable? It seemed fantastically unbelievable. Yet, in looking back upon the conventional New England home life he saw how it might be so.