Blount laughed in spite of himself.  Gantry, the Dick Gantry of the college period, had always been a man’s man, gay, light-hearted, and care-free to the outward eye, but in reality one who was carrying burdens of poverty and distress which might well have crushed an older and a stronger man.  There had been no time for sentiment then, and Blount wondered if there had been in any later period.

“I am afraid I can’t get any comfort out of that suggestion,” he returned.  “When Miss Patricia Anners says ‘No,’ I am quite sure she means it.”

“Think so?” said Gantry, still sympathetic.  “Well, I suppose you are the best judge.  Tough, isn’t it, old man?  What’s the obstacle?—­if you can tell it without tearing the bandages off and saying ‘Ouch!’”

“It is Miss Anners’s career.”

“H’m,” was the doubtful comment; “I’m afraid you’ll have to elaborate that a little for me.  I’m not up in the ‘career’ classification.”

“She has been studying at home and abroad in preparation for social-settlement work in the large cities.  Of course, I knew about it; but I thought—­I hoped—­”

“You hoped it was only a young woman’s fad—­which it probably is,” Gantry cut in.

“Y-yes; I’m afraid that was just what I did hope, Dick.  But I couldn’t talk against it.  Confound it all, you can’t go about smashing ideals for the people you love best!”

“Rich?” queried Gantry.

“Oh, no.  Her father has the chair of paleontology, and never gets within speaking distance of the present century.  The mother has been dead many years.”

“And you say the girl has the Hull House ambition?”

“The social-betterment ambition.  It’s an ideal, and I can’t smash it.  You wouldn’t smash it, either, Dick.”

“No; I guess that’s so.  If I were in your fix I should probably do what you are doing—­say ‘Good-by, fond heart,’ and hie me away to the forgetful edge of things.  And it’s simply astonishing how quickly the good old sage-brush hills will help a man to forget everything that ever happened to him before he ducked.”

Blount winced a little at that.  It was no part of his programme to forget Patricia.  Indeed, for twenty-four hours, or the waking moiety of that period, he had been assuring himself of the utter impossibility of anything remotely approaching forgetfulness.  This thought made him instantly self-reproachful; regretful for having shown a sort of disloyalty by opening the door of the precious and sacred things, even to so good a friend as Dick Gantry; and from regretting to amending was never more than a step for Evan Blount.  There were plenty of reminiscences to be threshed over, and Blount brought them forward so tactfully that Gantry hardly knew it when he was shouldered away from the open door of the acuter personalities.