“It is nice to know that you hadn’t forgotten us. How long did you say you have been back?”
“Only a few days; less than three weeks, to be exact.”
“And you are working in the railroad office again?” He did not answer because they were entering the hotel and M’sieu Bero, successor to the man who had made Charpiot’s the Delmonico’s of Denver, was bustling forward to welcome them.
“Delight’ to see you, M’sieu Trask; et vous, Ma’mselle—or is it the Madame?”
Philip flushed like an embarrassed boy and hastened to stand his companion’s identity upon its proper feet. “Miss Dabney,” he said. “She is from the South and knows your New Orleans cooking. Can you put us where we will be by ourselves?”
“But, yes! A private room up-stairs, maybe?”
“Oh, no; not that,” Philip broke in, flushing again at the too plain implication; “just a corner in the public room where we can have a table together.”
“I fix you,” was the reply; and the table for two was secured, where Philip, sitting opposite his guest, had his first good look at her in a strong light.
She was thinner than she had been a year earlier, and the dark eyes had candlelight shadows under them; still, the eyes were very much alive, and the thinness had not marred the perfect oval of her face. There was a lack of color in the pretty lips; that and a translucency of skin hinting at confining work and long hours, and, quite likely, he imagined, at sterner privations. The thought of the privations stirred him deeply. She was too fine and precious to be thrown into the grinding mill of a struggle for existence. Without doubt that was what had happened. She was carrying the burden for the family of four, and was, by her own admission, working all sorts of hours doing it.
The dining-room was warm, and when she slipped out of her coat he went around to hang it up for her. With the coat in his hands he decided at once that it was too thin for a Denver evening wrap. Also, he noted that the collar and cuffs had been carefully turned and darned; and the same observation went for the tight-fitting basque with its bit of lace at the throat and the unmistakable signs of wear on the sleeves. Philip was not unfamiliar with the pinchings and makeshifts of economy; he had known them at home. But the signs of them here and now moved him strangely, as if life, which had lightly tossed Bromley and himself an incredible fortune, were bitterly unfair to the weak and more deserving.