thers. 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-Abbes. 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 M