“She wouldn’t tell me where she was going; wouldn’t give me even a hint. But I guess she took one of the morning trains. She left early enough to catch any one of ’em. She said you’d given her the money to go with.” “No,” he denied soberly; “I gave her money so that she could pay you whatever she might be owing you, and get ready to marry me.” The woman collapsed into the nearest chair. “Marry you? Why, my dear man! What do you think she’s made of? She’s too good a girl to do anything like that!” “Too good?” he queried vaguely. “Sure! She’d know too well what it would do to you on the day you’d want to turn your back on the sporting life. She cried when she went, but she wouldn’t tell me what for: she said I’d know some time to-day. And I do know now. She went to keep you from doing the craziest thing a man of your kind ever does. Some day maybe you’ll know what she’s done for you, and what it cost the poor little soul to do it.” Philip found his hat and moved toward the door. “I think I know it now,” he returned half absently; and after he had paid and dismissed the hackman, he went in search of the Jew second-hand man to stop the dismantling of his rooms which had already begun, tearing a small legal document, which he took from his pocket, into tiny squares and scattering them in the street as he hurried along. Two days later, Reddick, who had dropped into the Curtis Street chop house for a midday bite, found himself seated opposite Bromley. “Well,” he observed, “it proved to be a false alarm, after all, didn’t it?” “I suppose it was, if you say so,” replied the play-boy with his good-tempered grin; “only I don’t know what you are talking about.” “You don’t? Haven’t you seen Phil?” “Not since day before yesterday when I bade him good-by.” “Gosh! Then it’s all new to you, is it? He is still here--in his old diggings in the Alamo. It was a flash in the pan--that marriage of his. The girl saved his bacon by skipping out.” “Um,” said Bromley curiously. “She must have hated him good and hard to run away from half a gold mine.” “Hate nothing! It was exactly the other way around. She thought too much of him to let him ruin himself for life. Madam Blanche was in the office yesterday, and she told me about it. A mighty fine thing for the little outcast to do, it strikes me. This is a queer old round world, and you can’t most always sometimes tell what’s going to happen in it next.” “Amen,” chanted the play-boy; and his appetite, which had been capricious for a pair of days, began to return with gratifying zest.