“So you have quite made up your mind to leave Denver, have you?”
It was the day of deliverance, and Hobart, claiming the elder right, had met Brant at the opening of the prison doors, whisking him off straightway to Elitch’s and to a private box therein, where they could have a quiet talk over their luncheon and a quiet smoke afterward.
Brant shrugged. “That says itself, doesn’t it? I am not wholly shameless. After all the free advertising I have been getting lately, people will stop and point me out in the streets.”
Hobart’s laugh was a friendly jeer. “That is what you get for trying to play the part of Providence—a not altogether blameless Providence, either, since you were going to let a judge and a jury hang an innocent man. How did you come to get so befogged in the ethical part of you?”
Brant waved the question aside in the gesture which flicked the ash from his cigar.
“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’” he quoted. “We’ll drop that part of it, if you don’t mind.”
“But I do mind; I am curious to know.”
Brant did not hasten to explain, and when he spoke again it was to ask a seemingly irrelevant question.
“Do you know what it means to love a woman, Ned?”
“I’m supposed to, am I not?”