She made a swift little gesture of appeal. “You must try to make him understand that there isn’t any pale--not in his sense of the word--after he comes back.” Then: “He is coming back, isn’t he?” Bromley nodded. “Yes; I think he is coming back. But as to making him understand: I fancy there is only one person in the world who can do that successfully, Jean. That person is yourself.” She bent lower over her sewing. “What makes you say that, Harry?” He was not looking at her when he answered. His gaze had wandered to the far end of the room; to a girlish face framed in a tousled mass of yellow hair; ripe lips pressed together and the fair brow wrinkled as their owner puzzled over her lesson for the next day. “I say it, Jeanie, dear, because, in spite of everything he has been and has done, Philip loves you, even as you love him,” he said. “But he believes he has sinned beyond your forgiveness. If you can forgive him----” She looked up to see why he had let the sentence lapse, and when the distracting reason became apparent, she laid her work aside and slipped away to the bed-room she shared with Mysie. When she came back she was holding one hand behind her. Suddenly the play-boy found himself staring at a reflection of his own face in a little hand-mirror. He glanced up at her with the boyish smile that endeared him to all women. “You are a little wretch, Jean!” he laughed. “You caught me red-handed, didn’t you?--just as you said you would that day when we were out in the Highlands. All right; it’s a fact, and I plead guilty. But I’ll be good and patient and wait until you won’t have to say that I’m robbing the cradle. Now that you know what I was dreaming about, may I go and see if I can’t give Mysie a bit of help? She seems to be finding her trigonometry harder than usual to-night, judging from the way she is making faces at it.” * * * * * Bromley’s prediction that Philip would return to Colorado came true within a fortnight, and the news of his arrival reached the play-boy through Reddick. Going at once to the rooms in the Alamo Building, Bromley found the returned traveller opening his mail. “You made a quick trip, Phil,” was his greeting. “How did you find things in the old home?” Philip laid the envelope opener aside and felt for his pipe. “I found them pretty much as I expected to. And there was nothing to stay for, after my errand was done.” “No trouble about the errand, was there?” “No. The bank people didn’t ask any questions. They were only too glad to see the color of their money again.” “And your mother and sisters?” “They wanted me to stay, of course. They couldn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t retire and settle down at home as a solid citizen; why I should want to go back to the outlandish West.” “Well, why should you?” Bromley asked, with his most disarming smile.