governess, and she wouldn't go to the mosques because she said they
were full of fleas. We always go to Homburg and Paris in the summer,
and to big hotels in London. I love to travel, but I don't love to
travel that way, would you?"

"I travel because I have no home," said Clay. "I'm different from the
chap that came home because all the other places were shut. I go to
other places because there is no home open."

"What do you mean?" said Hope, shaking her head. "Why have you no
home?"

"There was a ranch in Colorado that I used to call home," said Clay,
"but they've cut it up into town lots. I own a plot in the cemetery
outside of the town, where my mother is buried, and I visit that
whenever I am in the States, and that is the only piece of earth
anywhere in the world that I have to go back to."

Hope leaned forward with her hands clasped in front of her and her eyes
wide open.

"And your father?" she said, softly; "is he--is he there, too--"

Clay looked at the lighted end of his cigar as he turned it between his
fingers.

"My father, Miss Hope," he said, "was a filibuster, and went out on the
'Virginius' to help free Cuba, and was shot, against a stone wall. We
never knew where he was buried."

"Oh, forgive me; I beg your pardon," said Hope. There was such
distress in her voice that Clay looked at her quickly and saw the tears
in her eyes. She reached out her hand timidly, and touched for an
instant his own rough, sunburned fist, as it lay clenched on his knee.
"I am so sorry," she said, "so sorry." For the first time in many
years the tears came to Clay's eyes and blurred the moonlight and the
scene before him, and he sat unmanned and silent before the simple
touch of a young girl's sympathy.

An hour later, when his pony struck the gravel from beneath his hoofs
on the race back to the city, and Clay turned to wave his hand to Hope
in the doorway, she seemed, as she stood with the moonlight falling
about her white figure, like a spirit beckoning the way to a new
paradise.

VIII

Clay reached the President's Palace during the supper-hour, and found
Mr. Langham and his daughter at the President's table. Madame Alvarez
pointed to a place for him beside Alice Langham, who held up her hand
in welcome. "You were very foolish to rush off like that," she said.

"It wasn't there," said Clay, crowding into the place beside her.

"No, it was here in the carriage all the time. Captain Stuart f