testify against
him. He returned to the field little benefited by the enforced
separation from his fellows, and speedily showed symptoms of returning
prostration that led the general commanding to order him again to the
seashore and recommend his being sent on a sea voyage. It was during
this voyage that, after four wonderful days at Nagasaki, he found
himself daily, almost hourly, in the presence of Inez Farrell, as
beautiful and graceful a girl as ever his eyes had seen. He was strong
neither physically nor mentally. He was still an invalid when they met
on the veranda of the old hotel overlooking that wonderful land-locked
harbor. He had by no means forgotten the impression created by her
beauty and her lissome grace when dancing at the club at Manila. He was
invited by Major Farrell to be one of their little party on a rickshaw
ride over the green hills to Mogi. It was an ideal day. It was an ideal
night, with the moon nearing full as they sat later on the upper
veranda, gazing out upon the riding lights of the shipping
thick-clustered on the placid bosom of the bay. It was followed by other
nights as beautiful both ashore and at sea. He was twenty years her
senior, yet she seemed to look for him, wait for him, prefer him in
every way to younger officers, also homeward bound, and these youngsters
left him to his fate.

What time he was not walking the deck, with her little hand resting on
his arm, or flung in long, low steamer chair close to hers, where he
could watch the wondrous beauty of her face and feel the spell of her
soft, languorous, lovely eyes, Dwight found himself in converse with her
father, a patriotic quartermaster, the owner of valuable properties in
the Lone Star State, to which he must speedily return--his "boys," two
nephews, were not trained to business, said he, and they, too, had been
seeing service and unsettling their minds and habits with the volunteers
that didn't get to Cuba. His daughter was his chief anxiety, he
admitted. She had her mother's luxurious Spanish temperament; needed a
guiding hand--a husband to whom she could look up with respect and
honor, not a callow youngster with no ideas beyond scheming for
promotion and better pay. Several of these young chaps had been buzzing
about her at Manila, but she had "turned them all down," said Farrell.
She had sense and power of observation with all her possibly romantic
admiration for soldiers, but what she really admired was the real
s