A Soldier of the Legion

THE UPPER BERTH

When he had learned at the village of La Tour that Doctor Lefebre had left the place long ago, to practise in Paris, Max went there, and found Lefebre without difficulty. He was now, at fifty, a well-known man, still young looking, but with a somewhat melancholy face, and the long eyelids that mean Jewish ancestry. When he had listened to Max's story he said, with a thoughtful smile: "Do you see, it is to you I owe my success? I have never repented what I did for Madame. Still less do I repent now, having met you. I gained advantages for myself that I could not otherwise have had; and to-day proves that I gave them to one who Has known how to profit by every gift. The other—the girl—would not have known how. There was something strange about the child, something not right, not normal. I have often wondered what she has become. But it is better for you not to think of her. Fate has shut a door between you two. Don't open it. That is the advice, Monsieur, of the man who brought you into this very extraordinary world."

Max thanked him, but answered that, for good or ill, he had made up his mind. Doctor Lefebre shrugged his shoulders with an air of resigned regret, and told what little he knew of the Delatours since he had sent the young woman off to Algeria with the baby. The first thing he had heard was four or five years after, when he paid a visit to La Tour, and was told that Maxime Delatour had left the army and settled permanently in Algeria. Then, no more news for several years, until one day a letter had been forwarded to him in Paris from his old address at La Tour. It was from Madame Delatour, dated "Hotel Pension Delatour, Alger," asking guardedly if he would tell her where she might write to the American lady whose child had been born at the château. "The lady who had been kind to her and her baby." She would like to send news of little Josephine, in whom the lady might still take an interest. Madame Delatour had added in a postscript that she and her husband were keeping a small hotel in Algiers, which they had taken with "some money that had come to them," but were not doing as well as they could wish. Doctor Lefebre, feeling sure that she meant to make trouble, had not answered the letter; but even had he answered, he could only have said that Mrs. Doran lived in New York. He knew no more himself, and had never tried to find out. Since then he had heard nothing of the Delatour family.

That same night Max left Paris for Marseilles, and the next morning he was on board the General Morel starting for Algiers. For the first time in his life he had to think of economy: for though Rose's legacy had amounted to something over fifteen thousand dollars, already it was nearly disposed of. He determined never again to touch a Doran dollar for his own personal use, unless he discovered that the rightful owner was dead. He had left Fort Ellsworth owing a good deal here and there; for tradesmen were slow about sending bills to such a valuable customer. Now, however, he felt that he must pay his debts with the money that was his own; and settling them would make an immense hole in his small inheritance. There, for instance, were the pearls and the ring he had bought for Billie Brookton. Their cost alone was nine thousand dollars, and even if Billie should offer to give them back, he meant to ask her to keep them for remembrance. But she would not offer. He would never have admitted to himself that he knew she would not; yet, since receiving her letter, he had known. If he had by and by to tell Billie that he was to be a poor man, she would make some charming excuse for not sending back his presents. Or else she would not refer to them at all. Whatever the future might bring, it seemed to Max that he had lost youth's bright vision of romance. There was no such girl in the world as the girl he had dreamed. The letter had shown him that—the one letter he had ever had from Billie Brookton.

After his talk with Doctor Lefebre the change in his life became for Max more intimately real than it had been before. The fact that he was travelling second-class, though an insignificant thing in itself, brought it home to him in a curious, irritating way. He felt that he must be a weak, spoiled creature, not worthy to call himself a soldier, because little, unfamiliar shabbinesses and inconveniences disgusted him. He remembered how he had revelled in his one trip abroad with Rose and some friends of theirs the year before he went to West Point. They had motored from Paris to the Riviera, and stayed in Nice. Then they had come back to Marseilles, and had taken the best cabins on board a great liner, for Egypt. What fun he and the other boy of the party had had! He felt now that, however things turned out, the fun of life was over.

If the girl, Josephine Delatour, lived, he would have to leave the army; that was clear. Grant Reeves had shown him why. And it would be hard, for he loved soldiering. He could think willingly of no other profession or even business. Yet somewhere, somehow, he would have to begin at the bottom and work up. Besides, there were his real parents to be thought of, if they were still alive. Max felt that perhaps he was hard—or worse still, snobbish—not to feel any instinctive affection for them. His mother had sold him, in order that she might have money to go to her husband, whom she loved so much better than her child. Well, at least she had a heart! That was something. And if the pair still kept a little hotel, what of that? Was he such a mean wretch as to be ashamed because he was the son of a small hotel-keeper? Max began spying out in himself his faults and weaknesses, which, while he was happy and fortunate, he had never suspected. And now and then he caught the words running through his mind: "If only she is dead, the whole thing will be no more than a bad dream." What a cad he was! he thought. And even if she were dead, nothing could ever be as it had been. Jack Doran was not his father, and he would have no right to anything that had been Jack's, not even his love. If he kept the money it would not make him happy. He could never be happy again.

It was in this mood that he went on board the General Morel, the oldest and worst-built ship of her line. She was carrying a crowd of second-class passengers for Algiers, and the worried stewards had no time to attend to him. He found his own cabin, by the number on his ticket, groping through a long, dark corridor, which smelt of food and bilge water. The stateroom was as gloomy as the passage leading to it, and he congratulated himself that at least he had the lower berth.

His roommate, however, had been in before him, and either through ignorance or impudence had annexed Max's bunk for himself. On the roughly laundered coverlet was a miniature brown kitbag, conspicuously new looking. It had been carelessly left open, or had sprung open of itself, being too tightly packed, and as Max prepared to change its place, muttering, "Cheek of the fellow!" he could not help seeing two photographs in silver frames lying on top of the bag's other contents. Both portraits were of men. One was an officer in the uniform of the French army, with the typical soldier look which gives likeness and kin to fighting men in all races of the world. The other photograph Max recognized at a glance as that of Richard Stanton, the explorer.

Queer, Max thought, as he lifted the bag, open as it was, to the upper berth. Queer, that some little bourgeois Frenchman, journeying second-class from Marseilles to Algiers, should have as a treasure in his hand-baggage the portrait of a celebrated and extremely pugnacious Englishman who had got the newspapers down on him two or three years ago for a wild interview he had given against the entente cordiale. Max remembered it and the talk about it in the officers' mess at Fort Ellsworth, just after he joined his regiment. However, the Frenchman's photographs were his own business; and Max relented not at all toward the cheeky brute because he had a portrait of the great Richard Stanton in his bag. This was the sort of thing one had to expect when one travelled second-class! A few weeks before he would have thought it impossible as well as disgusting to bunk with a stranger whom he had never seen; but as he said to himself, with a shrug of the shoulders which tried to be Spartan, "Misfortune makes strange bedfellows." Max was disciplining himself to put up with hardships of all sorts which would probably become a part of everyday life. His own hand-luggage, a suitcase with his name marked on it, had been dumped down by some steward in the corridor, and he carried it into the stateroom himself, pushing it far under the lower berth with a rather vicious kick. As rain was falling in torrents, and a bitter wind blowing, he kept on his heavy overcoat, and went out of the cabin leaving no trace of his ownership there except the hidden suitcase. Perhaps on that kick which had sent it out of sight the shaping of Max Doran's whole future life depended.

On the damp deck and in the dingy "salle" of the second-class Max wondered, with stifled repulsion, which among the fat Germans, hook-nosed Algerian Jews, dignified Arab merchants, and common-looking Frenchmen, was to share his ridiculously small cabin. Most of them appeared to be half sick already, in fearful anticipation of the rocking they were doomed to get in the ancient tub once she steamed out of the harbour and into the face of the gale. In the "gang," as he called it, there was visible but one person in what Max Doran had been accustomed to think of as his own "rank." That person was a girl, and despite the gloom which shut him into himself, he glanced at her now and then with curiosity. It seemed unaccountable that such a girl should be travelling apparently alone, and especially second-class.

The first thing that caught his attention was the colour of her hair as she stood with her back to him, on deck. She was wrapped in a long, dark blue coat, with well-cut lines which showed the youthfulness of her tall, slim figure, as tall and slim as Billie Brookton's, but more alertly erect, more boyish. On her head was a small, close-fitting toque of the same dark blue as her coat; and between this cap and the turned-up collar bunched out a thick roll of yellow hair. It was not as yellow as Billie's, yet at first glance it reminded him of hers, with a sick longing for lost beauty and romance. Seeing the delicate figure, cloaked in the same blue which Billie affected for travelling, he thought what it would be like to have the girl with the yellow hair turn, to show Billie's face radiant with love for him, to hear her flutey voice cry: "Max, I couldn't bear it without you! Forget what I said in that horrid letter. I didn't mean a word of it. I've given up everything to be your wife. Take me!"

Soon the girl did turn from the rain blowing into her face, and that face was of an entirely different type from Billie's. Seeing it, after that attack upon his imagination, was a sharp relief to Max. Still he did not lose interest. The girl's hair was not so yellow where it grew on her head and framed the rather thin oval of her face, as in the thick-rolled mass behind, golden still with childhood's gold. Except for her tall slenderness she was not in the least like Billie Brookton; and she would have no great pretension to beauty had it not been for a pair of long, gray, thick-lashed eyes which looked out softly and sweetly on the world. Her nose was too small and her mouth too large, but the delicate cutting of the nostrils and the bow of the coral-pink upper lip had fascination and a sensitiveness that was somehow pathetic. She held her head high, on a long and lovely throat, which gave her a look of courage, but a forced courage, not the christening gift of godmother nature. That sort of girl, Max reflected, was meant to be cherished and taken care of. And why was she not taken care of? He wondered if she had run away from home, in her dainty prettiness, to be jostled by this unappreciative, second-class crowd? She was brave enough, though, despite her look of flower-delicacy, to stop on deck long after the ship had steamed out from the comparatively quiet, rock-bound harbour, and plunged into the tossing sea. At last a big wave drove the girl away, and Max did not see her again until dinner time. He came late and reluctantly into the close-smelling dining-saloon, and found her already seated at the long table. Her place was nearly opposite his, and as he sat down she looked up with a quick, interested look which had girlish curiosity in it, and a complete lack of self-consciousness that was perhaps characteristic. Evidently, as he had separated her in his mind from the rabble, wondering about her, so she had separated him and wondered also. She was too far away for Max to speak, even if he had dared; but a moment later a big man who squeezed himself in between table and revolving chair, next to the girl, made an excuse to ask for the salt, and begin a conversation. He did this in a matter-of-fact, bourgeois way, however, which not even a prude or a snob could think offensive. And apparently the girl was far from being a prude or a snob. She answered with a soft, girlish charm of manner which gave the impression that she was generously kind of heart. Then something that the man said made her flush up and start with surprise.

From that moment on the two were absorbed in each other. Could it be, Max asked himself, that the big, rough fellow and the daintily bred girl had found an acquaintance in common? There seemed to be a gulf between them as wide as the world, yet evidently they had hit upon some subject which interested them both. Through the clatter of dishes Max caught words, or fragments of sentences, all spoken in French. The man had a common accent, but the girl's was charming. She had a peculiarly sweet, soft voice, that somehow matched the sweetness and softness of the long, straight-lashed eyes under the low, level brows, so delicately yet clearly pencilled. Max guessed at first that she was English; then from some slight inflection of tone, wondered if she were Irish instead. It was a name which sounded like "Sidi-bel-Abbés" that made the girl start and blush, and turn to her neighbour with sudden interest. Again and again they mentioned "Sidi-bel-Abbés," which meant nothing for Max until he heard the girl say "La Legion Etrangére." Immediately the recollection of a book he had read flashed into Max's brain. Why, yes, of course, Sidi-bel-Abbés was a place in Algeria, the headquarters of the Foreign Legion, that mysterious band of men without a country, in whom men of all countries are interested. What was there in the subject of the Foreign Legion to attract such a girl? Could she be going alone to Sidi-bel-Abbés, hoping to find some lost relative—a brother, perhaps? She asked the man eager questions, which Max could not hear, but the big fellow shook his bullet-shaped head. Evidently he had little information to give on the subject which specially appealed to her; but there were others on which he held forth volubly; and though the girl's attention flagged sometimes, she could have been no more gracious in her manner to the common fellow if he had been an exiled king. "La Boxe" were the words which Max began to hear repeated, and a boxer was what the man looked like: a second or third rate professional. Max wished that he could catch what was being said, for boxing was one of his own accomplishments. He boxed so well that once, before he was twenty-one, he had knocked out his master, an ex-lightweight champion, in three rounds. Since then he had kept up his practice, and the sporting set among the officers at Fort Ellsworth had been proud of their Max Doran.

Every moment the weather grew worse, and one after another the few second-class passengers who had dared to risk dining faded away. At last, about halfway through the badly served meal, the girl got up with a wan little smile for her talkative neighbour, and went out, keeping her balance by catching at the back of a chair now and then. The bullet-headed man soon followed, charging at the open door like a bull, as a wave dropped the floor under his feet. But Max, priding himself on his qualities as a sailor, managed to sit through the meagre dessert.

The girl was not visible on the rain-swept deck, or in the gloomy reading-room, where Max glanced over old French papers until his optic nerves sent imperative messages of protest to his brain. Then he strayed on deck again, finding excuse after excuse to keep out of his cabin, where no doubt a seasick roommate was by this time wallowing and guzzling. At last, however, his swimming head begged for a pillow, no matter how hard, and in desperation he went below. He found the cabin door on the hook, and the faded curtain of cretonne drawn across. There was one comfort, at least: the wretch liked air. Max hoped the fellow had gone to sleep, in which case there might be some chance of rest. Gently he unhooked the door and fastened it again in the same manner. A little light flittered through the thin curtain, enabling Max to grope his way about the tiny stateroom, and he determined not to rouse his companion by switching on the electricity.

It had occurred to him, on his way to the cabin, that he might find his berth usurped by a prostrate form, as in the afternoon by a bag. But his first peering glance through the dimness reassured him on this point. The owner of the bag had taken the hint, and stowed himself in his own bunk. Max could just make out a huddled shape under bedclothes which had been drawn high for warmth. Then he knelt down to grope for the suitcase which he had pushed far under his own berth. Seeking it in the semi-darkness, a wave sent him sprawling. He heard from somewhere a shrill crash of glass, a sudden babble of excited voices, and decided it would not be worth while to undress unless the storm should abate. He scrambled up, and thankfully flung himself, just as he was, on to his bunk. In the wild confusion of squeaking, straining planks, the thump of waves against the porthole, the demon-shrieks of infuriated wind, and the shouts and running to and fro of sailors overhead, it seemed impossible that any human being could sleep. Yet the creature overhead was mercifully quiet; and suddenly slumber fell upon Max, shutting out thought and sound. For a while he slept heavily; but by and by dreams came and lifted the curtain of unconsciousness, stirring him to restlessness. It seemed that he had lived through years since New York, and that everything had long ago been decided for him, one way or the other, though his dulled brain kept the secret. He knew only that he was at Sidi-bel-Abbés—Sidi-bel-Abbés. How he had got there, and what he was doing, he could not tell. It ought to be a town, but it was not. There were no houses nor buildings of any kind in this strange Sidi-bel-Abbés. He could see only waves of yellow sand, billowing and moving all around him like sea waves; and it was sea as well as desert. Suddenly one of the waves rolled away, to show a small white tent, almost like a covered boat. A voice was calling to him from it, and he struggled to get near, falling and stumbling among the yellow waves. Then abruptly he started back. It was Billie Brookton's voice. Instead of being glad to hear it, he was bitterly, bleakly disappointed, and felt chilled to the heart with cold. Surprised at his own despair, he waked up, with a great start, just in time to brace his feet against the bottom of the berth and save himself from being thrown out by a shuddering bound of the ship. From overhead he heard a sigh of pain or weariness, and the top berth creaked with some movement of its occupant. "The beast's awake!" thought Max, resentfully. "Now for ructions! No more hope of sleep for me, I suppose."

But all was still again, except for a faint rustling as if the pillow were being turned over. At the same instant something long and supple, like a thick, silky rope, slid down from above. He could see it in the dim light as it fell and brushed his hand protruding, palm uppermost, over the edge of the bunk. Quite mechanically he shut his fingers on the thing, to prevent its dropping to the floor, and, to his amazement, it felt to the touch like a woman's hair. His hand was full of it—a great, satin-soft curl it seemed to be. Only, it couldn't be that, of course! Maybe he was half dreaming still. He opened his fingers and let the stuff go. But instead of falling to the floor, the long rope swayed gently back and forth with the rocking of the ship. It was hair! A wonderful plait of hair, attached to a woman's head. A woman was lying there in the upper berth.

THE NIGHT OF STORMS

A Woman! But how was it possible that there should be a woman in his cabin? There must have been some unthinkable mistake, and he felt confident that it was not he who had made it. He had looked carefully at the number over the door, comparing it with the number on his ticket. But, after all, what did it matter? It was too late now to apportion blame. She was there. And what hair she had! When she stood up it must fall far below her knees.

"What shall I do?" thought Max. "Shall I lie still until she goes to sleep again, and then sneak out into the salle? If she doesn't see my suitcase she need never know I've been in the room."

And, after all, it came back to that, whether he had mistaken the cabin, or she. If he had left his suitcase in plain sight, marked "Lieutenant Max Doran, —th Cavalry, Fort Ellsworth," the woman would have rung for a steward, and the error would somehow have been adjusted.

Four or five minutes passed, and silence reigned in the berth overhead. Max sat up cautiously, lest his bunk should squeak, and had begun still more cautiously to emerge from it, when there came a sudden vicious lurch of the ship. He was flung out, but seized the berth-curtain, as the General Morel awkwardly wallowed, and staggered to his feet, just in time to save the occupant of the upper berth from flying across the room. With a cry, she fell on to his shoulder, and he held her up with one hand, still grasping the curtain with the other. The long plait of hair and a smooth bare arm were round his neck. A face was close to his, and he could feel warm, quick breaths on his cheek.

"Don't be frightened," he heard himself soothe her with deceitful calm. "It'll be all right in a minute. I won't let you fall."

Even as he spoke, it occurred to Max that possibly she didn't understand English. The thought had hardly time to pass through his mind, however, when she answered him in English in a shocked whisper, trying vainly to draw away:

"But—it's a man!—in my cabin!"

"I'm awfully sorry," said Max. "There's been some mistake. Better let me hold you a few seconds more, till the ship's steadier. Then I'll lift you down to the lower berth. You see, I thought it was my cabin."

"Oh," she exclaimed; and he felt a quiver run through the bare arm. Her hair, which showered over his face and twined intricately round his neck, had a faint, flowery perfume. "As soon as I get you down, and make you comfortable, I'll go," he hurried on. "There, now, I think things are quieting for the moment. We must have had two waves following one another quicker than the rest. Let go your hold on the berth, and I'll take you out."

He felt her relax obediently; and slipping one arm under her shoulder, the other under her knees, he lifted a burden which proved to be light, from the upper berth, to bestow it in safety, far back against the wall in the bunk underneath.

"Oh, thank you," was breathed out with a sigh of relief. "You're very kind—and so strong! But I feel dreadfully ill. I hope I'm not going to faint."

"I'll get you some brandy," said Max, bethinking himself of a certain silver flask in his suitcase, a prize as it happened, won as an amateur of la boxe.

To his horror she made no answer.

"Jove!" he muttered. "She's gone off—and no wonder. It's awful!"

He began to be flurried, for his own head was not too clear. "She may be flung to the floor while I'm groping around for that suitcase of mine, if she's fainted, and can't save herself when the next wave comes," he thought. "That won't do. I'll have to light up, and wall her in with the bedding from the top bunk, so she can't easily be pitched out."

Hesitating a little, not quite sure about the propriety of the necessary revelation, he nevertheless switched on the electricity. After the dusk which had turned everything shadow-gray, the little stateroom appeared to be brilliantly illuminated. In his berth lay the girl he had seen on deck and at dinner.

Max was not completely taken by surprise, as he would have been had he seen the vision before hearing her voice. As she clung round his neck, she had spoken only brokenly and in a whisper, but from the first words he had felt instinctively sure of his companion's identity.

If she had been delicately pale before, now she was deathly white, so white that Max, who had never before seen a woman faint, felt a stab of fear. What if she had a weak heart? What if she were dead?

She wore a dressing-gown of a white woollen material, inexpensive perhaps, but classic in its soft foldings around the slender body; and the thought flitted through Max's head that she was like a slim Greek statue, come alive; or perhaps Galatea, disappointed with the world, turning back to marble.

All the while he, with unsteady hands, unlocked and opened his bag, fumbling among its contents for the flask, she lay still, without a quiver of the eyelids. She did not even seem to breathe. But perhaps girls were like that when they fainted! Max didn't know. He wanted to listen for the beating of her heart, but dared not. He would try the brandy, and if that did not bring her to herself, he would ring and ask for the ship's doctor. But—could he do that? How could he explain to any one their being together in this cabin?

Hastily he poured a little brandy from the flask into the tiny cup which screwed on like a cover. The pitching and tossing made it hard not to spill the fluid over the upturned face—that would have been sacrilege!—but with an adroitness born of desperation he contrived to pour a few drops between the parted lips. Apparently they produced no effect; but another cautious experiment was rewarded by a gasp and a slight quivering of the white throat. On one knee by the side of the berth, Max slipped an arm under the pillow, thus lifting the girl's head a little, that she might not choke. As he did this she swallowed convulsively, and opening her eyes wide, looked straight into his.

"Thank heaven!" exclaimed Max. "You frightened me."

She smiled at him, their faces not far apart, her wonderful hair trailing past his breast. Yet in his anxiety and relief Max had lost all sense of strangeness in the situation. Drawing long, slow breaths, she seemed purposefully to be gaining strength to speak. "It's nothing—to faint," she murmured. "I used to, often. And I feel so ill."

"Have you any one on board whom I could call?" Max asked.

"Nobody," she sighed. "I'm all alone. I—surely this cabin is 65?"

"I think it's 63. But no matter," Max answered hurriedly. "Don't bother about that now. I——"

"When I came in first this morning, I rang for a stewardess to ask if there was to be any one with me," the girl went on, a faint colour beginning to paint her white cheeks and lips with the palest rose. "But nobody answered the bell. There was no luggage here, and I thought I must be by myself. But afterward a stewardess or some one put my bag off this bed on to the upper one so I dared not take the lower berth. I put the door on the hook, to get air; but when I heard somebody come in, I never dreamed it might be a man."

"Of course not," Max agreed. "And I—when I saw a form in the dim light, lying up there—I never thought of its being a woman. I can't tell you how sorry I am to have seemed such a brute. But——"

"After all, it's a fortunate thing for me you were here," the girl comforted him. "If you hadn't been, I should have fallen out of the top berth and perhaps killed myself. I should hate to die now. I want so much to see my father in Africa, and—and—somebody else. I think you must have saved my life."

"I should be so happy to think that," Max answered warmly. "I haven't as pleasant an errand in Africa as you have. But whatever happens, I shall be thankful that I came, and on this ship. I was wondering to-day if I were glad or sorry to have been born. But if I was born to save a girl from harm, it was worth while, of course, just for that and nothing else. Now, if you're feeling pretty well again, I'd better go." Gently he drew his arm out from under the pillow, thus laying down the head he had supported.

The girl turned, resting her cheek on her hand—a frail little hand, soft-looking as that of a child—and gazed at Max wistfully.

"I suppose you'll think it's dreadful of me," she faltered, "but—I wish you needn't go. I've never been on the real sea before since I was a baby: only getting from England to Ireland the shortest way, and on the Channel. This is the first storm I've seen. I never thought I was a coward. I don't like even women to be cowards. I adore bravery in men, and that's why I—but no matter! I don't know if I'm afraid exactly, but it's a dreadful feeling to be alone, without any one to care whether you drown or not, at night on a horrible old ship, in the raging waves. The sea's like some fierce, hungry animal, waiting its chance to eat us up."

"It won't get the chance," Max returned cheerfully. He was standing now, and she was looking up at him from the hard little pillow lately pressed by his own head. "I shouldn't wonder if the old tub has gone through lots of worse gales than this."

"It's comforting to hear you say so, and to have a human being to talk to, in the stormy night," sighed the girl. "I feel better. But if you go—and—where will you go?"

"There are plenty of places," Max answered her with vague optimism.

Just then the General Morel gave a leap, poised on the top of some wall of water, quivered, hesitated, and jumped from the height into a gulf. Max held the girl firmly in the berth, or she would have been pitched on to the floor. Involuntarily she grasped his arm, and let it go only when the wallowing ship subsided.

"That was awful!" she whispered. "It makes one feel as if one were dying. I can't be alone! Don't leave me!"

"Not unless you wish me to go," Max said with great gentleness.

"Oh, I don't—I can't! Except that you must be so miserably uncomfortable."

"I'm not; and it's the finest compliment and the greatest honour I've ever had in my life," Max stammered, "that you should ask me to—that it should be a comfort to you, my staying."

"But you are the kind of man women know they can trust," the girl apologized for herself. "You see, one can tell. Besides, from the way you speak, I think you must be an American. I've heard they're always good to women. I saw you on deck, and afterward at dinner. I thought then there was something that rang true about you. I said 'That man is one of the few unselfish ones. He would sacrifice himself utterly for others.' A look you have about the eyes told me that."

"I'm not being unselfish now," Max broke out impulsively; then, fearing he had said an indiscreet thing, he hurried on to something less personal. "How would it be," he suggested in a studiously commonplace tone, "if I should make myself comfortable sitting on my suitcase, just near enough to your berth to keep you from falling out in case another of those monsters hit the ship? You could go to sleep, and know you were safe, because I'd be watching."

"How good you are!" said the girl. "But I don't want to sleep, thank you. I don't feel faint now. I believe you've given me some of your strength."

"That's the brandy," said Max, very matter of fact. "Have a few drops more? You can't have swallowed half a teaspoonful——"

"Do you think, if I took a little, it would make me warm? I'm so icy cold."

"Yes, it ought to send a glow through your body." He poured another teaspoonful into the miniature silver cup, and supported the pillow again, that she need not lift her head. Then he took the two blankets off the upper berth, and wrapped them round the girl, tucking them cozily in at the side of the bed and under her feet.

"If you were my brother," she said, "you couldn't be kinder to me. Have you ever had a woman to take care of—a mother, or a sister, perhaps?"

"I never had a sister," Max answered. "But when I was a boy I loved to look after my mother."

"And now, is she dead?"

"Now she's dead."

"My mother," the girl volunteered, "died when I was born. That made my father hate the thought of me, because he worshipped her, and it must have seemed my fault that she was lost to him. I haven't seen my father since I was a little girl. But I'm going to him now. I've practically run away from the aunts he put me to live with; and I'd hardly any money, so I was obliged to travel all the way second-class."

"That's exactly what I thought!" ejaculated Max.

"Did you think about me, too?" she asked, interest in their talk helping her to forget the rolling of the ship.

"Yes, I thought about you—of course."

"That I'd run away?"

"Well, you were so different from the rest, it was queer to see you in the second-class."

"But so are you—different from the rest. Yet you're in the second-class."

"I'm hard up," exclaimed Max, smiling.

"You, too! How strange that we, of all the others, should come together like this. It is as if it were somehow meant to be, isn't it? As if we were intended to do something for each other in future. I wish I could do something for you, to pay you for to-night."

"I don't need pay." Max smiled again, almost happily. "It's you who are being good to me. I was feeling horribly down on my luck."

"I'm sorry. But it's helped you to help me. I understand that. Do you know, I believe you are one whose greatest pleasure is in doing things for those not as strong as yourself."

"I never noticed that in my character," laughed Max.

"Yet there's something which tells me I'm right. I think you would, for that reason, make a good soldier. My father is a soldier. He's stationed at a place called Sidi-bel-Abbés."

"But that's where the Foreign Legion is, isn't it?" The words slipped out.

"He's colonel of the First Regiment. Oh, I believe it's half dread of what he'll say to me, that makes me so ill and nervous to-night. The only two men in the world I love are so strong, so—so almost terrible, that I'm like a little wreath of spray dashed against the rocks of their nature. They don't even know I'm there!"

Suddenly Max seemed to see the two framed photographs in the open bag: an officer in French uniform, and Richard Stanton, the explorer, the man of fire and steel said to be without mercy for himself or others. Max felt ashamed, as if inadvertently he had stumbled upon a secret. "Strong men should be the tenderest to women," he reminded her.

"Yes, on principle. But when they want to live their own lives, and women interfere? What then? Could one expect them to be kind and gentle?"

"A man worth his salt couldn't be harsh to a woman he loved."

"But if he didn't love her? I'm thinking of two men I know. And just now, more of my father than—than the other. I've got no one to advise me. I wonder if you would, a little? You're a man, and—and I can't help wondering if you're not a soldier. Don't think I ask from curiosity. And don't tell me if you'd rather not. But you see, if you are one, it would help, because you could understand better how a soldier would feel about things."

"I have been a soldier," Max said. There was no reason why he should keep back the truth from this little girl for whom he was playing watchdog: the little girl who thought him as kind as a brother! "But I'm afraid I don't know much about women."

"The soldier I'm thinking about—my father—doesn't want to have anything to do with women. My mother spoiled him for others. I believe their love story must be the saddest in the whole world. But tell me, if you were old, as he is, nearly fifty, and you had a daughter you didn't love—though you'd been kind about money and all that—what would you say if she suddenly appeared from another country, and said she'd come to live with you?"

"By Jove!" exclaimed Max. "Is that what you're going to do?"

"Yes. You think my father will have a right to be angry with me, and perhaps send me back?"

"I don't know about the right," said Max, "but soldiers get used to discipline, you see. And a colonel of a regiment is always obeyed. He might find it inconvenient if a girl suddenly turned up."

"But that's my only hope!" she pleaded. "Surprising my father. Anyhow, I simply can't go back to my aunts. I have some in Dublin—they were my mother's aunts, too: and some in Paris—aunts of my father. That makes them my great-aunts, doesn't it? Perhaps they're harder for young people to live with than plain aunts, who aren't great. I shall be twenty-one in a few weeks and free to choose my own life if my father won't have me. I'm not brave, but I'm always trying to be brave! I can engage as a governess or something, in Algeria, if the worst comes to the worst."

"I don't believe your father would let you do that. I wouldn't in his place."

"After all, you're very young to judge what he would do, even though you are a soldier!" exclaimed the girl, determined not to be thwarted. "I must take my chance with him. I shall go to Sidi-bel-Abbés. If there's a train, I'll start to-morrow night. And you, what are you going to do? Shall you stop long in Algiers?"

"That depends," answered Max, "on my finding a woman I've come to search for."

The girl was gazing at him with the deepest interest. "You have come to Algiers to find a woman," she murmured, "and I, to find a man. Do you—oh, don't think me impertinent—do you love the woman?"

"No," said Max. "I've never seen her." And then, the power of the storm and the night, and their strange, dreamlike intimacy, made him add: "I love a woman whom I may never see again."

"And I," said the girl, "love a man I haven't seen since I was a child. Let's wish each other happiness."

"I wish you happiness," echoed Max.

"And I you. I shall often think of you, even if we never meet after to-morrow. But I hope we shall! I believe we shall." She shut her eyes suddenly, and lay still for so long that Max was afraid she might have fainted again.

"Are you all right?" he asked anxiously, bending toward her from his low seat on the suitcase.

She opened her eyes with a slight start, as if she had waked, half dazed, from some unfinished dream.

"Oh, yes," she said. "I was making a picture, in a way I have. I was wondering what would happen to us, in our different paths, and trying to see. One of my aunts says it is 'Celtic' to do that. I saw you in a great waste-place, like a desert. And then—I was there, too. We were together—all alone. Perhaps, although I didn't know it, I'd really fallen asleep."

"Perhaps," agreed Max, and a vague thrill ran through him. He, too, had dreamed of desert as he lay in the lower berth, and she, overhead, had dreamed a desert dream, each unknown to the other. "Try to go to sleep again."

She closed her eyes, and presently he thought that she slept. Once or twice she waked with the heave and jolt of a great wave, always to find her watchdog at hand.

But at last, when with the dawn the storm lulled, Max noiselessly switched off the light and went out.

THE NEWS

It was after breakfast when they met once more, on a wet deck, in bleak sunshine.

"I waked up in broad daylight and found you and your suitcase gone," said the girl. "Oh, how guilty I felt! And then to discover that, just as you thought, the cabin was 63, not 65. What became of you?"

"I was all right," replied Max evasively. "I got a place to rest and wash."

"In 65?"

"No, not there."

"Why, was there a woman in that cabin, too?"

Max laughed. It was good to have some one to laugh with. "I didn't dare look," he confessed. "And I didn't care to wander about explaining myself and my belongings to suspicious stewards."

They walked up and down the deck, shoulder to shoulder, like old comrades. Last night there had been so many matters more pressing and more important, that they had forgotten such trifles as names. Now they introduced themselves to each other, though Max had an instant's hesitation before calling himself Doran. To-morrow, or even to-day, he might learn that which would part him forever from the name and all that had endeared and adorned it for him.

"Do you know what I've been calling you?" the girl asked, half ashamed, half shyly friendly, "'St. George.' Because you came and saved me from the dragon of the sea that I was afraid of. And that was appropriate, because St. George is my patron saint. I was born on his day, and one of my names is Georgette, in honour of him, and of my father, who is Georges: Colonel Georges DeLisle. My French aunts call me Georgette, for him. My Irish aunts call me 'Sanda,' for my mother, who was Corisande, and I like being 'Sanda' best."

She was frank about herself, as if to reward Max for his St. George-like vigil, telling him details of her life in Ireland and France, and how it had come about that Richard Stanton, her father's friend, had informally acted as her guardian when she was a child. Somehow, finding her so simple and outspoken, so kindly interested in him, Max could not bear, on his part, to build up a wall of reserve. He gave the name that had always been his: and though he did not tell her the whole story of his quest, he said that he was in search of a person to whom, if found, all that had been his would belong. "But you needn't pity me," he added quickly. "I'm used to the idea now. I shall lose some things by being poor, but I shall gain others."

She gave him a long look, seeing that he wanted no sympathy in words, and that it would jar on him if she tried to offer it. "Yes, you'll gain others," she echoed. "It must be splendid to be a man. I wonder—if things go as you think—will you stay and seek your fortune in Algeria?"

Seek his fortune in Algeria! Max could not answer for a second or two. Again he seemed to hear Grant Reeves's rather affected voice speaking far off as if in a gramophone: "Perhaps you won't want to come back to America."

When Grant had said that, Max had resolved almost fiercely that nothing on earth should keep him from going back as quickly as possible. If Grant or Edwin Reeves had calmly advised his seeking a new fortune in remote Algeria, he would have flung away the proposition with passion; but when Sanda DeLisle quietly made the suggestion, it was different. America lay behind him in the far distance, where the sun sets. His face was turned to the east, and Algeria was near. The girl whom he had been able to help and protect was near, also. And she would be in Algeria. If he hurried home to America he would never see her again. Not that that ought to matter much! They were ships passing each other in the night. Yet—they had exchanged signals. Max had a queer feeling that they belonged to each other, and that, if it were not for her, he would be hideously, desperately homesick at this moment, almost homesick enough to turn coward and go back with his errand not done. Curiously enough, he felt, too, that she had somewhat the same feeling about him. Silently they were helping each other through a crisis.

"I hadn't thought of staying in Algeria," he answered her at last. "I don't suppose I shall stay. But—I don't know. Just now my future's hidden behind a big cloud."

"Like mine!" cried Sanda DeLisle. "Does it comfort you at all to know there's some one here, close to your side, who's walking in the dark, exactly as you are?"

It was the thought that had hovered, dim and wordless, in his own mind. "Yes, it does comfort me," he said. "Though I ought to be sorry that things aren't clear for you. They will be, though, I hope, before long."

"And for you," she added. "I wish we could exchange experiences when we've found out what's going to become of us. I wish you were going on to Sidi-bel-Abbés."

"I wish I were," Max said, and he did actually wish it.

"Will you write and tell me what happens to you?" she rather timidly asked.

"I should like to. It's good of you to care."

"It's not good, but I do care. How could I help it, after all you've done for me?"

"You'll never know what it was to me to have the chance. And will you write what your father's verdict is? If you should be going back, perhaps I——"

"Oh, I shall not be going back!" the girl cried, with sharp decision. "But I'll write. And I shall never forget. If men disappoint me—though I hope, oh, so much, they will not—I shall remember one loyal friend I have made. After last night and to-day, we couldn't be less than friends, could we? even though we never hear from each other again."

"Thank you for saying that. I feel it, too, more than you can," Max assured her. "But since we're to be friends, will you let me help you all I can, and see you again on shore, before we go our separate ways? Let me find out about your train, and take you to it, and so on; and perhaps you'll dine with me, if there's time before you start."

"How good you are!" She gave him one of those soft, sweet glances, which, unlike Billie Brookton's lovely looks, were prompted by no conscious desire to charm. "But you will be so busy with your own affairs!"

"Not too busy for that. I don't suppose it will be very difficult to get at what I've come for. I shall soon know—one way or the other. I may have to go on somewhere else, but one day won't matter. I can give myself a little indulgence, if it's for the last time."

So they settled it. Max was to be "St. George" and keep off dragons for a few hours more.

The General Morel was supposed to do the distance between Marseilles and Algiers in twenty-four hours, but on this trip she had an unusually good excuse to be late. The storm had delayed her, and every one was thankful that it was only half-past three when the ship steamed into the old "pirate city's" splendid harbour.

Max Doran and Sanda DeLisle stood together watching the Atlas mountains turning from violet blue to golden green, and the clustered pearls on hill and shore transform themselves into white domes. The two landed together, also, and Sanda let Max go with her in a big motor omnibus to the Hotel Saint George, the hotel of her patron saint, whose name Max remembered well because of postcards picturing its beautiful terrace and garden, sent him long ago by Rose when he was a cadet at West Point. They discovered that the first train in which Sanda could leave for Sidi-bel-Abbés would start at nine o'clock that evening, so the proposed dinner became possible; and Sanda, by the advice of Max, took a room at the hotel for the rest of the day, inviting him to have tea with her on the terrace at five, if he were free to come back.

He waited until the girl had disappeared with a porter and her hand-luggage, and then inquired of the concierge whether the Hotel-Pension Delatour still existed. He put the question carelessly, as though it meant nothing to him, adding, as the man paused to think, that he had looked in vain for the name in the guide-book.

"Ah, I remember now, sir," said the concierge. "There used to be a hotel of that name, close to the old town—the Kasbah; quite a little place, for commercants, and people like that. Why, yes, to be sure! But the name has been changed, five or six years ago it must be. I think it is the Hotel-Pension Schreiber now."

"Oh, and what became of Delatour?" Max heard himself ask, still in that carefully careless tone which seemed to his ears almost too well done.

"I'm not sure, sir, but I rather think he died. Yes, now I recall reading something in La Depeche Algerienne, at the time. He'd been a brave soldier, and won several medals. There was a paragraph, yes, with a mention of his family. He came from the aristocracy, it said. Perhaps that's why he didn't turn out a good man of business. Or maybe he drank too much or took to drugs. These old retired soldiers who've seen hard fighting in the South often turn that way."

"Did he leave a widow and children?" Max went on, his throat rather dry.

"That I can't tell you, sir; but Delatour's successor might know. I could send there, if——"

"Thank you. I'll go myself," said Max.

The concierge advised a cab, although there was of course the tram which would take him close to the Hotel Schreiber, and then he could inquire his way. Max chose the tram. He had thought it not unfair to pay the expenses of his quest for the Doran heiress with Doran money, since he had little left that he could call his own. But he had not spent an extra dollar on luxuries; and after a journey from New York to Paris, Paris to Algiers, second-class, a tram as a climax seemed more suitable than a cab.

Where the Arab town—old and secret, and glimmering pale as a whited sepulchre—huddled away from contact with Europe, a narrow street ran like a bridge connecting West with East, to-day with yesterday. Near the entrance to this street, where it started from a fine open place of great shops and cafés, the Hotel Schreiber stood humbly squeezed in between two dull buildings as shabby as itself.

"In a few minutes I shall know," Max said to himself, as he walked into a cheaply tiled, dingy hall, smelling of cabbage-soup and beer.

Commercial travellers' sample boxes and trunks were piled in the dim corners, and a fat, white little man behind a window labelled "Bureau" glanced up from some calculations, with keen interest in a traveller who for once looked uncommercial.

His eyes glazed again when he understood that Monsieur wished only to make inquiries, not to engage a room. He was civil, however, and glib in French with a South-German accent. Madame Delatour had sold her interest in the hotel to him, Anton Schreiber. Unfortunately there had been a mortgage. The widow was left badly off, and broken-hearted at her husband's death. With what little money she had, she had gone to Oran, and through official influence had obtained a concession for a small tobacconist business, selling also postcards and stamps. She ought to have done well, for there were many soldiers in Oran. They all wanted tobacco for themselves and postcards for their friends. But Madame lost interest in life when she lost Delatour—a fine fellow, well spoken of, though never strong since some fever he had contracted in the far South. A friend in Oran had written Schreiber the last news of poor Madame Delatour. That broken heart had failed. She had died suddenly about two years ago, and the girl (yes, there was a daughter, a strange young person) had been engaged through the influence of Schreiber's Oran friends, to assist the proprietor of the Hotel Splendide at Sidi-bel-Abbés. She was, Schreiber believed, still there, in the position of secretary; unless she'd lately married. It was some months since he'd heard.

Sidi-bel-Abbés.... Home of the Foreign Legion; home perhaps, of Sanda DeLisle!...

It was all over, then. The blow had fallen, and Max thought that he must be stunned by it, for he felt nothing, except a curious thrill which came with the news that he must go to Sidi-bel-Abbés. The Arab name rang in his ears like the sound of bells—fateful bells that chime at midnight for birth or death. It seemed to him that Something had always been waiting, hidden behind a corner of life, calling him to Sidi-bel-Abbés, calling for good or evil, for sorrow or happiness, who could tell? but calling. And his whole past, with its fun and popularity and gay adventure, its one unfinished love story, its one tragic episode, had been a long road leading him on toward this day—and Sidi-bel-Abbés.

The temptation to go back, to forget his mission, a temptation which had come to life many times after it had first been "scotched, not killed," did not now lift its head. Max had found out within less than an hour after landing that which would make him penniless and nameless; yet his most pressing wish seemed to be to get back in time for his appointment with Sanda DeLisle, and tell her that he, too, was going to Sidi-bel-Abbés.

SIR KNIGHT

Max hurried back to the St. George, knowing that he would be late, and arrived somewhat breathless on the terrace, at a quarter-past five. Miss DeLisle would forgive him when he explained. And he would explain! He was half minded to tell everything to the one human being within four thousand miles who cared.

It was March, and the height of the season in Algiers. Many people were having tea on the flower-draped terrace framed by a garden of orange trees and palms, and cypresses rising like burnt-out torches against the blue fire of the African sky. Max's eyes searched eagerly among the groups of pretty women in white and pale colours for a slim figure in a dark blue travelling dress. Sanda had said that she would come out to take a table and wait for him; but he walked slowly along without seeing, even in the distance, a girl alone. Suddenly, however, he caught sight of a dark blue toque and a mass of hair under it, that glittered like molten gold in the afternoon sun. Yes, there she was, sitting with her back to him, and close to a gateway of rose-turned marble pillars taken from the fountain court of some old Arab palace. But—she was not alone. A man was with her. She was leaning toward him, and he toward her, their elbows on the little table that stood between them.

The man sat facing Max, who recognized him instantly from many newspaper portraits he had seen—and the photograph in Sanda's bag. It was Richard Stanton, poseur and adventurer, his enemies said, follower and namesake of Richard Burton: first white man to enter Thibet; discoverer of a pigmy tribe in Central Africa, and—the one-time guardian of Sanda DeLisle.

Max had thought vaguely of the explorer as a man who must be growing old. But now he saw that Stanton was not old. His face had that look of eternal youth which a statue has; as if it could never have been younger, and ought never to be older. It was a square face, vividly vital, with a massive jaw and a high, square forehead. The large eyes were square, too; very wide open, and of that light yet burning blue which means the spirit of mad adventure or even fanaticism. The skin was tanned to a deep copper-red that made the eyes appear curiously pale in contrast; but the top of the forehead, just where the curling brown hair grew crisply up, was very white.

The man had thrown himself so completely into his conversation with the girl, that Max, drawing nearer, could stare if he chose without danger of attracting Stanton's attention. He did stare, taking in every detail of the virile, roughly cut features which Rodin might have modelled, and of the strong, heavy figure with its muscular throat and somewhat stooping shoulders. Richard Stanton was not handsome; he was rather ugly, Max thought, until a brief, flashing smile lit up the sunburnt face for a second. But it was in any case a personality of intense magnetic power. Even an enemy must say of Stanton: "Here is a man." He looked cut out to be a hero of adventure, a soldier of fortune, and in some sleeping depth of Max's nature a hitherto unknown emotion stirred. He did not analyse it, but it made him realize that he was lonely and unhappy, uninterestingly young; and that he was a person of no importance. He had come hurrying back to the hotel, anxious to explain why he was late; but now he saw—or imagined that he saw—even from Sanda's back, her complete forgetfulness of him. He might have been far later, and she would not have known or cared. Perhaps she would be glad if he had not come at all.

Max had until lately been subconsciously aware (though it was nothing to be proud of!) that he was rather an important personage in the eyes of the world. He had been a petted child, and flattered and flirted with as a cadet and a young officer, one of the richest and best looking at his post. Suddenly he stood face to face with the fact that he had no longer a world of his own. He was an outsider, a nobody, not wanted here nor anywhere. If he could have stolen away without danger of rudeness to Sanda, he would have gone and left her to Stanton, even though by so doing he lost his chance of seeing her again. But there was the danger that, after all, she had not quite forgotten him, and that she might be taking it for granted that he would keep his appointment. He decided not to interrupt the eager conversation at this moment, but to hover near, in case Miss DeLisle looked around as if thinking of him. He hardly expected her to do so, until the talk flagged, but perhaps some subtle thought-transference was like a reminding touch on her shoulder. She turned her head and saw Max Doran. For an instant she gazed at him half dazedly, as if wondering why he should be there. Her face was so transfigured that she was no longer the same girl; therefore it did not seem strange that she should have forgotten so small a thing as an invitation to tea given to a chance acquaintance. Instead of being pale and delicately pretty, she was a glowing, radiant beauty. Her dilated eyes were almost black, her cheeks carnation, her smiling lips not coral pink, but coral red. She made charming little gestures which turned her instantly into a French girl. "Oh, Mr. Doran!" she exclaimed. "Here is Mr. Stanton. Only think, he's staying in this hotel, and we found each other by accident! I came out here and he walked past. He didn't know me—it's such ages since I saw him—till I spoke."

Max had felt obliged to draw near, at her call, and to stand listening to her explanation; but it was clear that to Stanton he was irrelevant. The explorer had spread a folded map on the table. It was at that they had been looking, and as Sanda talked to the newcomer, Stanton's eyes returned to the map again. Max must have been dull of comprehension indeed if he had not realized that he was wanted by neither. The girl followed up her little preamble by introducing her new friend to her old one, and the explorer half rose from his chair, bowing pleasantly enough, though absent-mindedly; but there was nothing for Max to do save to excuse himself. He apologised by saying that his business would keep him occupied for the rest of the afternoon, and that he must forego the pleasure of having tea with Miss DeLisle. The expression of the girl's face as she said that she was very sorry contradicted her words. She was evidently enchanted to have Stanton to herself, and Max departed, smiling bitterly as he thought of his impatience to give her the news. This was what all her pretty professions of friendship amounted to in the end! He had been a fool to believe that they meant anything more than momentary politeness. She had not referred to his invitation for dinner, so had probably forgotten it in the flush of excitement at meeting her hero. It seemed cruel to recall it to her memory, as by this time no doubt Stanton and she were planning to spend the evening together, up to the last moment. Still, the situation was difficult, as she might remember and consider it an engagement. Max decided at last to send a card up to her room, where she would find it when her tête à tête with Stanton was over. He scribbled a few words in pencil, saying that his business would be over in an hour; that if Miss DeLisle cared to see him he would be delighted; but she must not consider herself in any way bound. He did not even mention the fact which a little while ago he had been eager to tell: that he was going to Sidi-bel-Abbés. Perhaps, as Stanton was a friend of Colonel DeLisle's, he, too, was on his way there, in which case Max would lurk in the background. The card, in an envelope, he gave to the concierge, and then went gloomily out to walk and think things over. Passing the terrace he could not resist glancing at the table nearest the marble pillars. The two still sat there, absorbed in each other, their heads bent over the map. Stanton looked up as if in surprise when a waiter appeared with a tray. They had apparently asked for tea, and then forgotten the order.

During that hour of absence Max Doran passed some of the worst moments of his life. He lived over again his anguish at Rose's death; heard again her confession which, like a sharp knife, with one stroke had cut him loose from ties of love; and gazed ahead into a future swept bare of all old friendships, luxuries, and pleasures. His "business," of which he had made much to Miss DeLisle, consisted solely in walking down the Mustapha hill from the garden of the Hotel St. George to the small white-painted post-office, and there sending off two telegrams. One was to Edwin Reeves: the other was the message for which Billie Brookton had thriftily asked in her special postscript. "Have lost everything," he wrote firmly. "Will explain in letter following and ask you to treat it in confidence. Good-bye, I hope you may be happy always. Max."

As he paid for the telegrams he wondered that the framing of Billie's did not turn one more screw of the rack which tortured heart and brain, but he felt no new wrench in the act of giving up the girl whom all men wanted. She seemed strangely remote, as if there had never been any chance of her belonging to him. Max had something like a sensation of guilt because he could not call up a picture of her, traced with the sharp clarity of an etching. In thinking of Billie, he had merely an impressionist portrait: golden hair, wonderful lashes, and a sudden upward look from large, dark eyes, set in a face of pearly whiteness. Because Sanda DeLisle was somewhat of the same type, having yellow-brown hair, and a small, fair face, her image would push itself in front of that other far more beautiful image; far more beautiful at least, save in the one moment of glowing radiance which had illumined Sanda, as a rose—light within might illumine a pale lily. No woman on earth could have been more beautiful than she, at that instant; but the magic fire had been kindled by, and for, another man; and if Max had not already guessed, it would have revealed her whole secret.

The impression was so vivid that it clouded everything else, just as a white light focussed upon one figure on the stage dims all others there. He thought of himself, and what he should do with life after his mission was finished; whether he should take the name of Delatour, which was rightfully his, or choose a new one; yet suddenly, in the midst of some pressing question, he would forget to search for the answer, as Sanda DeLisle's transfigured face seemed to shine on him out of darkness.

He stayed away from the hotel for precisely an hour, and then, returning, asked at the desk of the concierge whether there were a message for him. Yes, there was a letter. Max took it, thinking that this was perhaps the last time he should ever see the name of Doran on an envelope addressed to him. The direction had been scrawled in haste, evidently, but even so, the handwriting had grace and character. Its delicacy, combined with a certain firmness and impulsive dash, expressed to Max the personality of the writer. The letter was of course from Miss DeLisle; a short note asking if he would look for her on the terrace at six-thirty. She would be alone then. Max glanced at the hall clock. It wanted only three minutes of the half hour, and he went out at once. The scene on the terrace was very different from what it had been an hour ago. It might have been "set" for another act, was the fancy that flashed through the young man's mind. The hyacinth-pink of the sunset-sky was now faintly silvered with moonlight. All the gay groups of tea-drinking people had disappeared. Many of the crowding chairs had been taken away from the little tables and pushed back against the irregular wall of the house. The floor was being slowly inlaid with strips of shadow-ebony and moon-silver. Even the perfume of the flowers seemed changed. Those which had some quality of mystery and sensuous sadness in their scent had prevailed over the others.

At first Max saw no one, and supposed that Miss DeLisle had not yet come to keep the appointment; but as he slowly paced the length of the terrace, he discerned, standing on the farther side of the pillar-gateway, a figure that paused close to the carved balustrade and looked out over the garden. There was a suggestion of weariness and discouragement in the pose, and though the form had Sanda's tall slimness he could hardly believe it to be hers, until passing through the gateway he had come quite close to her. She turned at the sound of footsteps; and in the rose-and-silver twilight he could see that her eyes were full of tears.

Somehow it struck him as characteristic of the girl that she should not try to pretend she had not been crying. He could scarcely imagine her being self-conscious enough to pretend anything.

"Is it half-past six already?" she asked, in a very little voice, almost like that of a child who had been punished. "I'm glad you've come. Will you forgive me?"

"Forgive you for what?" Max asked, though he guessed what she meant, and added hastily, "I'm sure there's nothing to forgive."

"Yes, there is," she insisted; "you know that as well as I do. But you will forgive me, because—because I think you must have understood. I was not myself at all."

Max hesitated and stammered. He did not dare admit how well he had understood, though it seemed a moment for speaking clear truths, here in this wonderful garden which they two had to themselves, with the magic light of sunset and moonrise shining into their souls.

"You needn't be afraid of shaming me," the girl went on. "I felt that you understood everything, so we can talk now, when I've come back a little to myself. I didn't mind your seeing, then, because everything seemed unimportant except—just him, and my being there with him. And I don't mind even now, because there's so much that's the same in my life and yours. I feel (as I felt before I was carried out of myself) that we've drifted together at a time when we can help each other. You can forgive me for being selfish and thoughtless to you, because I was at a great moment of my life, and you realized it. Didn't you?"

"Yes," said Max.

"I've always adored him. He was the one I meant, of course, when I told you about caring for somebody," Sanda confessed. "You see, my father has never let me love him, in a personal sort of way. He has held me off, though I hope it's going to be different when he sees me. Sir Knight (that's what I always called Richard, ever since I was small) was very kind whenever he had time. He didn't mind my worshipping him. He never wrote, because he was too busy; but when he came home from his wonderful expeditions and adventures, he generally had some present for me. I've always followed him as far as I could, through the newspapers, and—I knew he was somewhere in Algeria now. I'm afraid—that's partly what made my wish to come so—terribly, irresistibly strong. I didn't quite realize that, until I saw him. Honestly, I thought it was because I couldn't live with my aunts any longer, and because I wanted so much to win my father before it was too late. But meeting Richard here, unexpectedly, when I imagined him somewhere in the South, showed me—the truth about myself. I'd been so anxious for you to come back, and to hear all that had happened to you; but meeting him put everything else out of my head!"

"It was natural," said Max. "You wouldn't be human if it hadn't."

"I think it was inhuman. For when I remembered—other things, I didn't seem to care. I was—glad when you said you had business and couldn't stay to tea. I hoped you'd forget that you'd asked me to dinner, because I wanted so much to have it with Sir Knight—with Richard. I thought he'd be sure to invite me, and take me to the train afterward. I was going to apologize to you as well as I could; but even if you'd been hurt, I was ready to sacrifice you for him."

"Please don't punish yourself by confessing to me," Max broke in. "Indeed it's not necessary. I——"

"I'm not doing it to punish myself," Sanda exclaimed. "I've been punished—oh, sickeningly punished!—already. I'm confessing to you because—I want our friendship to go on as if I hadn't done anything ungrateful and cruel to spoil it. I'm trying to atone."

"You've done that a thousand times over," Max comforted her, feeling that he ought to be comforted at the same time, yet aware that it was not so. He began to realize that he was boyishly jealous of the great man whose blaze of glory had made his poor rushlight of friendship flicker into nothingness.

"Then if I have atoned, tell me quickly your news," said the girl.

"The news is, that I haven't any past which belongs to me—and God knows whether I've a future." Max gave lightness to the sombre words with a laugh.

"Then the worst has happened to you?"

"One might call it that." Still he managed to laugh.

"Are you very miserable?"

"I don't know. I haven't had time to think."

"Don't take time—yet. Stay with me, as we planned before—before——"

"But Mr. Stanton? Aren't you——"

"No, I'm not. He left me fifteen minutes after you went. I shan't see him again."

"Not at the train?"

"No, not anywhere. You see, he has such important things to do, he hasn't time to bother much with—with a person he still thinks of as a little girl. Why, I told you, he would hardly have known me if I hadn't spoken to him! He's going away to-morrow, leaving for Touggourt. There are all sorts of exciting preparations to make for a tremendous expedition he means to undertake, though it will be months before he can be ready to start. He can think of nothing else just now. Oh, it was only 'How do you do?' and 'Good-bye' between us, I assure you, over there at the little tea-table I'd been keeping for you and me."

"It didn't look like anything so superficial," Max found himself trying once more to console her. "I'm sure it must really have meant a lot to him, meeting you. I could see even in the one glance I had, how absorbed he was——"

"Yes, in his map! He was pointing out his route to me, after Touggourt. He's chosen Touggourt for his starting-place, because the railway has just been brought as far as there. And there's a man in Touggourt—an old Arab explorer—he wants to persuade to go with him if he's strong enough. He—and some other Arab Richard came to Algiers to see, are the only two men alive, apparently, who firmly believe in the Lost Oasis that Sir Knight means to try to find, when he can get his caravan together, and start across the desert early next autumn after the hot weather."

"The Lost Oasis? I never heard of it," said Max. "Is there really such a place somewhere?"

"Richard doesn't know. He only believes in it; and says nearly every one thinks he's insane. But you must have heard—I thought every one had heard the old legend about a Lost Oasis—lost for thousands of years?"

"I'm afraid not. I haven't any desert lore." As Max made this answer, last night's dream came back, rising for an instant before his eyes like a shimmering picture, a monochrome of ochre-yellow. Then it faded, and he saw again the silver sky behind darkening pines, plumed date-palms, the delicate fringe of pepper trees, and black columns of towering cypress.

"All mine has come from Sir Knight: stories he's told me and books he's given me. Long ago he talked about the Lost Oasis. I thought of it as a thrilling fairy story. But he believes it may exist, somewhere far, far east, beyond walls of mountains and shifting sand-dunes, between the Sahara and the Libyan deserts."

"Wouldn't other explorers have found it, if it were there?"