f the retreating steps died away and looked long
and searchingly into her face. If the girl intended to ignore their
former meeting, he thought, he would at once put that idea beyond all
question. She bore his scrutiny with no apparent embarrassment. She was
an American girl, and as she would have expressed it, she was "game!"

"Well?" she said at last, questioningly.

"Yes," he responded, "well--well, indeed, _at last_!"

She bowed mockingly.

"And," he went on, "I have been searching for you a long time, Opal!"

He had not intended to say that, but having said it, he would not take
it back.

Then she remembered that she had said that she would call him "Paul" the
first time she met him, and she smiled.

"Searching for me? I don't understand."

"Of course not! Neither do I! Why should we? The best things in life are
the things we don't--and can't--understand. Is it not so?"

"Perhaps!" doubtfully. She had never thought of it in just that light
before, but it might be true. It was human nature to be attracted by
mystery. "But you have been looking for me, you say! Since when?--our
race?" And her laugh rang out on the air with its old mocking rhythm.

And the Boy felt his blood tingle again at the memory of it.

"But what did you say, Monsieur Zalenska--pardon me--Paul, I mean," and
she laughed again, "what did you say as you rode home again?"

The Boy shook his head with affected contrition.

"Unfit to tell a lady!" he said.

And the girl laughed again, pleased by his frankness.

"Vowed eternal vengeance upon my luckless head, I suppose!"

"Oh, not so bad as that, I think," said Paul, pretending to reflect upon
the matter--"I am sure it was not quite so bad as that!"

"It would hardly have done, would it, to vow what you were not at all
sure you would ever be able to fulfil? Take my advice, and never bank a
_sou_ upon the move of any woman!"

"You're not a woman," he laughed in her eyes; "you're just an
abbreviation!"

But Opal was not one whit sensitive upon the subject of her height. Not
she!

"Well, some abbreviations are more effective than the words they stand
for," she retorted. "I shall cling to the flattering hope that such may
be my attraction to the reader whose 'only books are woman's looks!'"

"But why did you run away?"

"Just--because!" Then, after a pause, "Why did you follow?"

"I don't know, do you? Just--because, I suppose!"

And then they both laughed again.

"But I know