s to be done there. Then in a
few days I'll be out of this machine and back to the ranche. You know
I've decided that my message to the world would best take the
substantial form of beef--a message which no one will esteem
unpractical."

He paused, noting the other's general droop of gloom.

"But what's the trouble, old chap? You look done up!"

"Bernal--it's all because I am too good-hearted, too unsuspecting. Being
slow to think evil of others, I foolishly assume that others will be
equally charitable. And you don't know what women are--you don't know
how the sentimental ones impose upon a man in my office. I give you my
word of honour as a man--my word of _honour_, mind you!--there never has
been a thing between us but the purest, the most elevated--the loftiest,
most ideal--"

"Hold on, old chap--I shall have to take the car ahead, you know, if you
won't let me on this one...."

"--as pure a woman as God ever made, while as for myself, I think my
integrity of purpose and honesty of character, my sense of loyalty
should be sufficiently known--"

"Say, old boy--" Bernal's face had lighted with a sudden flash of
insight--"is it--I don't wish to be indiscreet--but is it anything about
Mrs. Wyeth?"

"Then you _do_ know?"

"Nothing, except that Nance met me at the door just now and puzzled me a
bit by her very curious manner of asking if I had been at the Wyeth's
this afternoon."

"_What_?" The other turned upon him, his eyes again blazing with the
yellow points, his whole figure alert. "She asked you _that--Really_?"

"To be sure!"

"And you said--"

"'No'--of course--and she mumbled something about having been foolish to
think I could have been. You know, old man, Nance was troubled. I could
see that."

His brother was now pacing the floor, his head bent from the beautifully
squared shoulders, his face the face of a mind working busily.

"An idiot I was--she didn't know me--I had only to--"

Bernal interrupted.

"Are you talking to yourself, or to me?"

The rector of St. Antipas turned at one end of his walk.

"To both of us, brother. I tell you there has been nothing between
us--never anything except the most flawless idealism. I admit that at
the moment Nancy observed us the circumstances were unluckily such that
an excitable, morbidly suspicious woman might have misconstrued them. I
will even admit that a woman of judicial mind and of unhurried judgments
might not unreasonably have been puzzl