Soldiers of Fortune | Page 9

to speak. She was not afraid of

losing any one's attention.
``And have you come out of the West, knowing me so well, just to tell
me that I am wasting myself?'' she said. ``Is that all?''
``That is all,'' answered Clay. ``You know the things I would like to tell
you,'' he added, looking at her closely.
``I think I like to be told the other things best,'' she said, ``they are the
easier to believe.''
``You have to believe whatever I tell you,'' said Clay, smiling. The girl
pressed her hands together in her lap, and looked at him curiously. The
people about them were moving and making their farewells, and they
brought her back to the present with a start.
``I'm sorry you're going away,'' she said. ``It has been so odd. You
come suddenly up out of the wilderness, and set me to thinking and try
to trouble me with questions about myself, and then steal away again
without stopping to help me to settle them. Is it fair?'' She rose and put
out her hand, and he took it and held it for a moment, while they stood
looking at one another.
``I am coming back,'' he said, ``and I will find that you have settled
them for yourself.''
``Good-by,'' she said, in so low a tone that the people standing near
them could not hear. ``You haven't asked me for it, you know, but--I
think I shall let you keep that picture.''
``Thank you,'' said Clay, smiling, ``I meant to.''
``You can keep it,'' she continued, turning back, ``because it is not my
picture. It is a picture of a girl who ceased to exist four years ago, and
whom you have never met. Good-night.''
Mr. Langham and Hope, his younger daughter, had been to the theatre.
The performance had been one which delighted Miss Hope, and which

satisfied her father because he loved to hear her laugh. Mr. Langham
was the slave of his own good fortune. By instinct and education he
was a man of leisure and culture, but the wealth he had inherited was
like an unruly child that needed his constant watching, and in keeping it
well in hand he had become a man of business, with time for nothing
else.
Alice Langham, on her return from Mrs. Porter's dinner, found him in
his study engaged with a game of solitaire, while Hope was kneeling on
a chair beside him with her elbows on the table. Mr. Langham had been
troubled with insomnia of late, and so it often happened that when
Alice returned from a ball she would find him sitting with a novel, or
his game of solitaire, and Hope, who had crept downstairs from her bed,
dozing in front of the open fire and keeping him silent company. The
father and the younger daughter were very close to one another, and
had grown especially so since his wife had died and his son and heir
had gone to college. This fourth member of the family was a great bond
of sympathy and interest between them, and his triumphs and
escapades at Yale were the chief subjects of their conversation. It was
told by the directors of a great Western railroad, who had come to New
York to discuss an important question with Mr. Langham, that they had
been ushered downstairs one night into his basement, where they had
found the President of the Board and his daughter Hope working out a
game of football on the billiard table. They had chalked it off into what
corresponded to five- yard lines, and they were hurling twenty-two
chess-men across it in ``flying wedges'' and practising the several tricks
which young Langham had intrusted to his sister under an oath of
secrecy. The sight filled the directors with the horrible fear that
business troubles had turned the President's mind, but after they had sat
for half an hour perched on the high chairs around the table, while
Hope excitedly explained the game to them, they decided that he was
wiser than they knew, and each left the house regretting he had no son
worthy enough to bring ``that young girl'' into the Far West.
``You are home early,'' said Mr. Langham, as Alice stood above him
pulling at her gloves. ``I thought you said you were going on to some
dance.''

``I was tired,'' his daughter answered.
``Well, when I'm out,'' commented Hope, ``I won't come home at
eleven o'clock. Alice always was a quitter.''
``A what?'' asked the older sister.
``Tell us what you had for dinner,'' said Hope. ``I know it isn't nice to
ask,'' she added, hastily, ``but I always like to know.''
``I don't remember,'' Miss Langham answered, smiling at her father,
``except that he was very much sunburned