“That may all be. Just the same, I am going to take you home,” Philip insisted. “I owe it to my own self-respect, if I don’t owe it to you. Do we walk or ride?”
“It is only a little way; and, really, Mr. Trask, I wish you wouldn’t!”
“It is ‘Mr. Trask’ now, but it was ‘Philip’ last spring,” he reminded her.
“Well, then—Philip, won’t you let me run away by myself this time? We mustn’t stand here cluttering up Mr. Charpiot’s sidewalk. Please!”
“Is there any really good reason why I shouldn’t see you home?”
“N-no; I don’t reckon there is any reason. Only——”
“Then that settles it. Come along,” and he made her take his arm.
In a very few minutes the truth of her saying that she had only a short distance to go was rudely thrust upon him. A silent walk of two squares down the nearest cross street toward the Platte ended at the stair of a brick building dingy and old as age might be reckoned in this Aladdin city of the plain; a building whose sidewalk-fronting windows yawned into the empty darkness of a former storeroom. And the street in which it stood was the street of the Corinthian plangencies. The neighborhood, as all Denver knew, was not merely a shabby one; it was disreputable.
“Good gracious!” he exclaimed, as they paused at the dark stairfoot. “You don’t mean to tell me you are living here!”
“You would come,” she answered reproachfully; then: “We have rooms on the second floor. I—I’m sorry I can’t ask you in.”