Soldiers of Fortune | Page 8

picture of you, and I wrote East to the photographer for
the original. It knocked about the West for three months and then
reached me at Laredo, on the border between Texas and Mexico, and I
have had it with me ever since.''
Miss Langham looked at Clay for a moment in silent dismay and with a
perplexed smile.
``Where is it now?'' she asked at last.

``In my trunk at the hotel.''
``Oh,'' she said, slowly. She was still in doubt as to how to treat this act
of unconventionality. ``Not in your watch?'' she said, to cover up the
pause. ``That would have been more in keeping with the rest of the
story.''
The young man smiled grimly, and pulling out his watch pried back the
lid and turned it to her so that she could see a photograph inside. The
face in the watch was that of a young girl in the dress of a fashion of
several years ago. It was a lovely, frank face, looking out of the picture
into the world kindly and questioningly, and without fear.
``Was I once like that?'' she said, lightly. ``Well, go on.''
``Well,'' he said, with a little sigh of relief, ``I became greatly interested
in Miss Alice Langham, and in her comings out and goings in, and in
her gowns. Thanks to our having a press in the States that makes a
specialty of personalities, I was able to follow you pretty closely, for,
wherever I go, I have my papers sent after me. I can get along without a
compass or a medicine- chest, but I can't do without the newspapers
and the magazines. There was a time when I thought you were going to
marry that Austrian chap, and I didn't approve of that. I knew things
about him in Vienna. And then I read of your engagement to
others--well--several others; some of them I thought worthy, and others
not. Once I even thought of writing you about it, and once I saw you in
Paris. You were passing on a coach. The man with me told me it was
you, and I wanted to follow the coach in a fiacre, but he said he knew at
what hotel you were stopping, and so I let you go, but you were not at
that hotel, or at any other--at least, I couldn't find you.''
``What would you have done--?'' asked Miss Langham. ``Never mind,''
she interrupted, ``go on.''
``Well, that's all,'' said Clay, smiling. ``That's all, at least, that concerns
you. That is the romance of this poor young man.''
``But not the only one,'' she said, for the sake of saying something.

``Perhaps not,'' answered Clay, ``but the only one that counts. I always
knew I was going to meet you some day. And now I have met you.''
``Well, and now that you have met me,'' said Miss Langham, looking at
him in some amusement, ``are you sorry?''
``No--'' said Clay, but so slowly and with such consideration that Miss
Langham laughed and held her head a little higher. ``Not sorry to meet
you, but to meet you in such surroundings.''
``What fault do you find with my surroundings?''
``Well, these people,'' answered Clay, ``they are so foolish, so futile.
You shouldn't be here. There must be something else better than this.
You can't make me believe that you choose it. In Europe you could
have a salon, or you could influence statesmen. There surely must be
something here for you to turn to as well. Something better than
golf-sticks and salted almonds.''
``What do you know of me?'' said Miss Langham, steadily. ``Only what
you have read of me in impertinent paragraphs. How do you know I am
fitted for anything else but just this? You never spoke with me before
to-night.''
``That has nothing to do with it,'' said Clay, quickly. ``Time is made for
ordinary people. When people who amount to anything meet they don't
have to waste months in finding each other out. It is only the doubtful
ones who have to be tested again and again. When I was a kid in the
diamond mines in Kimberley, I have seen the experts pick out a perfect
diamond from the heap at the first glance, and without a moment's
hesitation. It was the cheap stones they spent most of the afternoon
over. Suppose I HAVE only seen you to-night for the first time;
suppose I shall not see you again, which is quite likely, for I sail
tomorrow for South America--what of that? I am just as sure of what
you are as though I had known you for years.''
Miss Langham looked at him for a moment in silence. Her beauty was
so great that she could take her time