ntract for the ore pier. Ted told us in his letters, and she used to
work it out on the map in father's study. She is a most energetic
child; I think sometimes she should have been a boy. I wish I could be
the help to any one that she is to my father and to me. Whenever I am
blue or down she makes fun of me, and--"

"Why should you ever be blue?" asked Clay, abruptly.

"There is no real reason, I suppose," the girl answered, smiling,
"except that life is so very easy for me that I have to invent some
woes. I should be better for a few reverses." And then she went on in
a lower voice, and turning her head away, "In our family there is no
woman older than I am to whom I can go with questions that trouble me.
Hope is like a boy, as I said, and plays with Ted, and my father is
very busy with his affairs, and since my mother died I have been very
much alone. A man cannot understand. And I cannot understand why I
should be speaking to you about myself and my troubles, except--" she
added, a little wistfully, "that you once said you were interested in
me, even if it was as long as a year ago. And because I want you to be
very kind to me, as you have been to Ted, and I hope that we are going
to be very good friends."

She was so beautiful, standing in the shadow with the moonlight about
her and with her hand held out to him, that Clay felt as though the
scene were hardly real. He took her hand in his and held it for a
moment. His pleasure in the sweet friendliness of her manner and in
her beauty was so great that it kept him silent.

"Friends!" he laughed under his breath. "I don't think there is much
danger of our not being friends. The danger lies," he went on,
smiling, "in my not being able to stop there."

Miss Langham made no sign that she had heard him, but turned and walked
out into the moonlight and down the porch to where the others were
sitting.

Young Langham had ordered a native orchestra of guitars and reed
instruments from the town to serenade his people, and they were
standing in front of the house in the moonlight as Miss Langham and
Clay came forward. They played the shrill, eerie music of their
country with a passion and feeling that filled out the strange tropical
scene around them; but Clay heard them only as an accompaniment to his
own thoughts, and as a part of the beautiful night and the tall,
beautiful girl who had dominated it. He watched her from the shadow as
she sat leaning easil