nly unending roads
through bleak countries; and I'm dreading to go back to them alone."

Beyond the veranda screen the fireflies were flashing; farther out, the
little green and red side-lights of the steaming launches, like other
colored fireflies, were sliding by; to the mastheads of the battle-ships
the red and white signal-lights were winking and glowing. The night was
alive with colorful things. Closing her eyes, Marie could hear the
lapping of little waves over pebbles, the challenging hail of a sailor
on watch, the music of a far ship's band. She bent her head to hear it
better--the sweetly faint cadence of that far-away band.

"And when was it you began to think of me, Andie?"

"Since those first days, Marie, when your brother and I bunked together
in the old S.$1.$2.construction camp. He used to read me letters of
yours from home. You were only a little girl then, and it was years
before I saw you; but I knew what you looked like even before I stole
your photograph----"

"Stole?"

"I did. Greg dropped it one day. I found it and never gave it back.
There it is--after nine years."

She laughed when she saw it. "Why, I can't make out to see what I looked
like then, Andie!"

"I know what you looked like. I've kissed the face away, dear, but I
know. In nine years, Marie, I never shifted from one coat to another
without shifting your photograph, too. If anything had happened to me,
they would have found your photograph on me, with your address on the
back. 'Then,' I used to say to myself, 'she'll know. And Greg won't mind
my stealing it.'" He laid it face up between them on the table. "The
miles you've travelled with me, dear heart, and never knew! Back in the
days of the construction camp they used to find sketches of a girl's
head in my note-books, a beautiful head badly done--drawn from that
photograph. But after I met you----"

"And after you met me, Andie?"

"Then I needed no photograph, though look and look at it I surely did.
Steamers in western seas, battle-ships in eastern waters, balustrades of
palaces--wherever it might be I was whirling with this old earth
around, I've had your face to look at. And when I couldn't see for the
darkness--rolled up in my rubber poncho, in no more romantic a place
than the muck of a swamp, I've looked up through the swaying
branches--or in the lee of a windy hill, it might be, with no more to
hinder than the clear air, I've looked up and marked your face in the
sw