strength of will and mind, and because he was good to look at. But he
determined that this one must sympathize with his work in the world, no
matter how unpicturesque it might seem to her. His work was the best
of him, he assured himself, and he would stand or fall with it.

It was a week after the visit to the mines that President Alvarez gave
a great ball in honor of the Langhams, to which all of the important
people of Olancho, and the Foreign Ministers were invited. Miss
Langham met Clay on the afternoon of the day set for the ball, as she
was going down the hill to join Hope and her father at dinner on the
yacht.

"Are you not coming, too?" she asked.

"I wish I could," Clay answered. "King asked me, but a steamer-load of
new machinery arrived to-day, and I have to see it through the
Custom-House."

Miss Langham gave an impatient little laugh, and shook her head. "You
might wait until we were gone before you bother with your machinery,"
she said.

"When you are gone I won't be in a state of mind to attend to machinery
or anything else," Clay answered.

Miss Langham seemed so far encouraged by this speech that she seated
herself in the boathouse at the end of the wharf. She pushed her
mantilla back from her face and looked up at him, smiling brightly.

"'The time has come, the walrus said,'" she quoted, "'to talk of many
things.'"

Clay laughed and dropped down beside her. "Well?" he said.

"You have been rather unkind to me this last week," the girl began,
with her eyes fixed steadily on his. "And that day at the mines when I
counted on you so, you acted abominably."

Clay's face showed so plainly his surprise at this charge, which he
thought he only had the right to make, that Miss Langham stopped.

"I don't understand," said Clay, quietly. "How did I treat you
abominably?"

He had taken her so seriously that Miss Langham dropped her lighter
tone and spoke in one more kindly:

"I went out there to see your work at its best. I was only interested
in going because it was your work, and because it was you who had done
it all, and I expected that you would try to explain it to me and help
me to understand, but you didn't. You treated me as though I had no
interest in the matter at all, as though I was not capable of
understanding it. You did not seem to care whether I was interested or
not. In fact, you forgot me altogether."

Clay exhibited no evidence of a reproving conscience. "I am s