ews, take
stenographic records, and write hundreds of letters for Mr. Winthrop
during the somewhat protracted discussion that preceded the
acquisition of the Virgin Islands by the United States. It is odd that
these tasks should have fallen to me, who added below Clive Winthrop's
signature to many communications the typed initials C. A. C., for I
have a special interest in these new possessions of ours, a very close
and sentimental one, since I was born on St. Thomas, one of the Virgin
Islands, and christened Charlotte Amalia after the little red-roofed
town on the shore of the perfect harbor. My birth in St. Thomas was
entirely unpremeditated, and I was taken away as soon as my mother was
able to travel; nevertheless, I have always longed during the twelve
years of my loneliness, without father or mother, to see the place
where they were so happy in each other and so blissful in the prospect
of my appearance.

I, then, have a right to this particular holiday and this opportunity
to decide my future. Miss Dorothea Valentine, on the contrary, is a
wholly unexpected, I will not say an unwelcome, companion, although
when I wish to be thinking of my own problems she generally desires to
discuss hers, which are trivial, though interesting and unique.

Everything about the girl piques interest; her beauty, her charm, her
childlike gayety and inconsequence, which are but the upper current of
a deeper sea of sincerity and common sense. Somebody says: "Ladies
vary in looks; they're like military flags for a funeral or a
celebration--one day furled, next day streaming. Men are ships;
figureheads, about the same in a storm or a calm, and not too
handsome, thanks to the ocean." The last phrases are peculiarly true
of Clive Winthrop, who is sometimes called the ugliest man in
Washington, yet who commands attention in any room that he enters
because of his fine physique, his noble head, and his distinction of
bearing and speech. Rugged he is, "thanks to the ocean," but he looks
as if he could swim against the strongest current. On the other hand,
it cannot be said that Dolly Valentine varies. She is lovely at
breakfast, lovelier at luncheon, and loveliest at dinner when the
dazzling whiteness of her neck and shoulders is revealed. Only a
tolerably generous woman would suffer herself to be in the almost
daily companionship of such a charmer, and that I am in that dangerous
juxtaposition is her fault, not mine.

"You must take me w