Soldiers of Fortune | Page 8

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 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