there must be perdition; it was the penalty that redeemed; that was the
token of forgiveness.

Hewson hurried out to Colorado, where he found Hernshaw a stout, silent,
impersonal man, whose notion of the paternal office seemed to be a ready
acquiescence in a daughter's choice of a husband; he appeared to think
this could be best expressed to Hewson in a good cigar He perceptibly
enjoyed the business details of the affair, but he enjoyed despatching
them in the least possible time and the fewest words, and then he settled
down to the pleasure of a superficial passivity. Hewson could not make
out that he regarded his daughter as at all an unusual girl, and from
this he argued that her mother must have been a very unusual woman. His
only reason for doubting that Rosalie must have got all her originality
from her mother was something that fell from Hernshaw when they were near
the end of their cigars. He said irrelevantly to their talk at that
point, "I suppose you know Rosalie believes in that ghost of yours?"

"Was it a ghost?--I've never been sure, myself," said Hewson.

"How do you explain it?" asked his prospective father-in-law.

"I don't explain it. I have always left it just as it was. I know that it
was a real experience."

"I think I should have left it so, too," said Hernshaw. "That always
gives it a chance to explain itself. If such a thing had happened to me I
should give it all the time it wanted."

"Well, I haven't hurried it," Hewson suggested.