“Hold on,” Philip interposed; “let’s get this thing straight, while we are about it. I love Jean Dabney; I never knew how much I loved her until after I had made it a shame to think of her in the same breath with myself. But I have done just that, Harry. Whatever else I have gained or lost in the past few months, I haven’t lost the sense of the fitness of things. If Jean knew ... but probably she does know ... that is the bitterest drop in the cup for me ... to know that she’d feel she’d be obliged to cross the street to avoid meeting me. But what is done is done, and can’t be undone.” “Then there is nothing I can say or do that will keep you from taking this last long jump into the depths?” said the play-boy, disheartened at last. “Nothing at all. It is no sudden impulse. I have considered it well in all its bearings. We shall go away from Denver, of course; the farther the better. If I don’t see you again----” A lump came into Bromley’s throat as he grasped the hand of leave-taking, and the fierceness of what he said was only a mask for the emotion that was shaking him. “You are a hideous fool, Phil, and if I did what I ought to, I’d break a chair over your head to bring you to your senses. Since I can’t do that--well, I hope the time may never come when you’d sell your soul to undo what you are planning to do to-day. Good-by.” In the street the play-boy hesitated, but only for a moment. He knew, none better, what a blow this last irrevocable plunge of Philip’s would be to the woman who had loved him--who still loved him--and his one thought, born of manly pity and sympathy, was to soften the blow for her, if that could be done. A few minutes later he was leaning upon the counter in Madame Marchande’s millinery shop and making his plea to the ample-bodied Frenchwoman into whose good graces he had long since won his way. “Ah, Monsieur; I think you will make marry with this preetty Mees Jean wan day, is it not? Then I shall lose my bes’ hat-trimmer. How you goin’ pay me for dat, eh? You say you’ll wan’ take her for buggy ride? _Eh bien_; she can go w’en you come for her.” Bromley ate his luncheon alone. What he had to say to Jean could not be said across a restaurant table. Moreover, he knew she had carried her luncheon to the shop, as usual. As soon as he thought he had given her time to eat it, he called for her, with the little white mare of the livery string between the shafts of the light side-bar buggy. “How did you know that I was tired enough to fairly long for a half-holiday?” she asked, as the little mare whisked them over the long Platte River bridge in a direction they had once before driven, toward the Highlands. “How does anybody know anything?” he returned, smiling and adding: “I flatter myself that there is not much about you that I don’t know, Jeanie, dear.” “I wonder?” she said soberly; then: “You have been a good brother to me this summer, Harry.”