but his two
daughters preferred to remain as spectators on the balcony, and Clay
and Stuart stayed with them.

"At last!" sighed Clay, under his breath, seating himself at Miss
Langham's side as she sat leaning forward with her arms upon the
railing and looking down into the plaza below. She made no sign at
first that she had heard him, but as the voices of Stuart and Hope rose
from the other end of the balcony she turned her head and asked, "Why
at last?"

"Oh, you couldn't understand," laughed Clay. "You have not been
looking forward to just one thing and then had it come true. It is the
only thing that ever did come true to me, and I thought it never would."

"You don't try to make me understand," said the girl, smiling, but
without turning her eyes from the moving spectacle below her. Clay
considered her challenge silently. He did not know just how much it
might mean from her, and the smile robbed it of all serious intent; so
he, too, turned and looked down into the great square below them,
content, now that she was alone with him, to take his time.

At one end of the plaza the President's band was playing native waltzes
that came throbbing through the trees and beating softly above the
rustling skirts and clinking spurs of the senoritas and officers,
sweeping by in two opposite circles around the edges of the tessellated
pavements. Above the palms around the square arose the dim, white
facade of the cathedral, with the bronze statue of Anduella, the
liberator of Olancho, who answered with his upraised arm and cocked hat
the cheers of an imaginary populace. Clay's had been an unobtrusive
part in the evening's entertainment, but he saw that the others had
been pleased, and felt a certain satisfaction in thinking that King
himself could not have planned and carried out a dinner more admirable
in every way. He was gratified that they should know him to be not
altogether a barbarian. But what he best liked to remember was that
whenever he had spoken she had listened, even when her eyes were turned
away and she was pretending to listen to some one else. He tormented
himself by wondering whether this was because he interested her only as
a new and strange character, or whether she felt in some way how
eagerly he was seeking her approbation. For the first time in his life
he found himself considering what he was about to say, and he suited it
for her possible liking. It was at least some satisfaction that s