w the deuce did he propose to find her?"

"I don't know. He told my wife some rotten yarn about instinct guiding
him to her; said he felt sure that the strength of his great love would
somehow lead him to her side. He didn't say that to me, couldn't, you
know. But it's wonderful what a fellow will say to a woman, if she's
sympathetic, and my wife is. Still, even so, he must be more or less
mad to think a thing like that. Mad about the girl. He's sane enough in
every other way."

"He can't be so mad as that," I said. "Just fancy going out into a
field--I suppose that's the way you'd do it--and hanging about until
your great love set you strolling off either to the right or to the
left. No man, however mad, could expect to come on a girl that way--no
one particular girl, I mean. Of course you'd meet several girls
whichever way you went. Couldn't help it. The world's full of girls."

"I don't know what he meant," said Daintree, "but my wife sympathized
with him and seemed to think he'd pull it off in the end. At first he
was a bit shy of letting her see the photo; but when he saw she was as
sympathetic as all that he showed it to her. Well, the moment she saw
it, she felt that she knew the face."

"That was a stroke of luck for Simcox."

"No it wasn't," said Daintree, "for my wife couldn't put a name to the
girl. She was sure she had seen her somewhere, knew her quite well, in
fact, but simply couldn't fix her. Funny thing, but it was exactly the
same when they showed me the photo. At the first glance I said right
away that I knew her. Then I found I couldn't say exactly who she was.
The more I looked the more certain I was that I'd seen her somewhere,
her or someone very like her. And it wasn't a commonplace face by any
means. Poor Simcox kept begging us to think. My wife went over our
visitors' book--we've kept one of those silly things for years--but
there wasn't a name in it which we couldn't account for. I got out all
the old albums of snapshots and amateur photos in the house. You know
the way those things accumulate; groups of all sorts. But we couldn't
find the girl. And yet both my wife and I were sure we'd met her. Then
one morning Simcox burst into my wife's little sitting-room--a place
none of the convalescents have any right to go. He was in a fierce state
of excitement. Said that an officer who'd arrived the night before was
exactly like the photo and that the girl must be his sister or cousin,
or someth