months and then reached me at Laredo, on the border between Texas and
Mexico, and I have had it with me ever since."

Miss Langham looked at Clay for a moment in silent dismay and with a
perplexed smile.

"Where is it now?" she asked at last.

"In my trunk at the hotel."

"Oh," she said, slowly. She was still in doubt as to how to treat this
act of unconventionality. "Not in your watch?" she said, to cover up
the pause. "That would have been more in keeping with the rest of the
story."

The 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