“But when you do see him?” she prompted.
“He is a wonderfully changed man, Jean. You wouldn’t know him at all for the old Philip. I don’t know how to describe the change except to say that it is somehow strangely softening—mollifying—if you know what I mean. It is as if he’d been down into the lower depths himself, and had learned to pity rather than to condemn. His changed attitude toward Jim Garth shows the line he is taking. He has never had anything but harsh contempt for Garth and people of his kind ... you know—people with appetites and no self-control. But now he has done what I have been trying all summer to do, and couldn’t: braced Garth up and sent him into the mountains where he will be out of the way of temptation.”
“I know,” came in low tones from the busy hat-trimmer. “That is the real Philip. But it is terrible that he had to suffer so before he could find himself.”
“He is still suffering; you can see that plainly enough.”
“Is he—is he still drinking?”
“I am afraid he is; though perhaps not so much to excess; at least, I haven’t seen him the worse for liquor since he came back from Leadville. As to that, this wide-open town is partly to blame. It is no exaggeration to say that half of the business of Denver is transacted in the bar-rooms. I get it every day. The minute I begin to talk business with a man, he will say, ‘Well, let’s go and have a drink and talk it over.’ It is in the air.”
A pause for a few moments, and then Jean looked up to say quietly: “Philip was here to-night.”
“What?—here in this house?”
“No; he just walked past—twice. I saw him through the window.”
The play-boy got out of his chair and his voice shook a little when he said: