Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless personupon earth,--a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man,perfectly good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his ownsilly self. If anything could have driven me from Gladys, itwould have been the thought of such a father-in-law. I amconvinced that he really believed in his heart that I came roundto the Chestnuts three days a week for the pleasure of hiscompany, and very especially to hear his views upon bimetallism,a subject upon which he was by way of being an authority.

For an hour or more that evening I listened to his monotonouschirrup about bad money driving out good, the token value ofsilver, the depreciation of the rupee, and the true standardsof exchange.

"Suppose," he cried with feeble violence, "that all the debts inthe world were called up simultaneously, and immediate paymentinsisted upon,--what under our present conditions would happen then?"

I gave the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man,upon which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habituallevity, which made it impossible for him to discuss anyreasonable subject in my presence, and bounced off out of theroom to dress for a Masonic meeting.

At last I was alone with Gladys, and the moment of Fate had come! All that evening I had felt like the soldier who awaits thesignal which will send him on a forlorn hope; hope of victory andfear of repulse alternating in his mind.

She sat with that proud, delicate profile of hers outlinedagainst the red curtain. How beautiful she was! And yet howaloof! We had been friends, quite good friends; but never could Iget beyond the same comradeship which I might have establishedwith one of my fellow-reporters upon the Gazette,--perfectlyfrank, perfectly kindly, and perfectly unsexual. My instinctsare all against a woman being too frank and at her ease with me. It is no compliment to a man. Where the real sex feeling begins,timidity and distrust are its companions, heritage from old wickeddays when love and violence went often hand in hand. The benthead, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure--these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the truesignals of passion. Even in my short life I had learned as much asthat--or had inherited it in that race memory which we call instinct.

Gladys was full of every womanly quality. Some judged her to becold and hard; but such a thought was treason. That delicatelybronzed skin, almost oriental in its coloring, that raven hair,the large liquid eyes, the full but exquisite lips,--all thestigmata of passion were there. But I was sadly conscious thatup to now I had never found the secret of drawing it forth. However, come what might, I should have done with suspense andbring matters to a head to-night. She could but refuse me, andbetter be a repulsed lover than an accepted brother.

So far my thoughts had carried me, and I was about to break thelong and uneasy silence, when two critical, dark eyes lookedround at me, and the proud head was shaken in smiling reproof. "I have a presentiment that you are going to propose, Ned. I dowish you wouldn't; for things are so much nicer as they are."

I drew my chair a little nearer. "Now, how did you know that Iwas going to propose?" I asked in genuine wonder.

"Don't women always know? Do you suppose any woman in the worldwas ever taken unawares? But--oh, Ned, our friendship has been sogood and so pleasant! What a pity to spoil it! Don't you feel howsplendid it is that a young man and a young woman should be ableto talk face to face as we have talked?"

"I don't know, Gladys. You see, I can talk face to face with--with the station-master." I can't imagine how that official cameinto the matter; but in he trotted, and set us both laughing. "That does not satisfy me in the least. I want my arms round you,and your head on my breast, and--oh, Gladys, I want----"

She had sprung from her chair, as she saw signs that I proposedto demonstrate some of my wants. "You've spoiled everything,Ned," she said. "It's all so beautiful and natural until thiskind of thing comes in! It is such a pity! Why can't youcontrol yourself?"

"I didn't invent it," I pleaded. "It's nature. It's love."

"Well, perhaps if both love, it may be different. I have neverfelt it."

"But you must--you, with your beauty, with your soul! Oh, Gladys,you were made for love! You must love!"

"One must wait till it comes."

"But why can't you love me, Gladys? Is it my appearance, or what?"

She did unbend a little. She put forward a hand--such a gracious,stooping attitude it was--and she pressed back my head. Then shelooked into my upturned face with a very wistful smile.

"No it isn't that," she said at last. "You're not a conceitedboy by nature, and so I can safely tell you it is not that. It's deeper."

"My character?"

She nodded severely.

"What can I do to mend it? Do sit down and talk it over. No, really, I won't if you'll only sit down!"

She looked at me with a wondering distrust which was much more tomy mind than her whole-hearted confidence. How primitive andbestial it looks when you put it down in black and white!--andperhaps after all it is only a feeling peculiar to myself. Anyhow, she sat down.

"Now tell me what's amiss with me?"

"I'm in love with somebody else," said she.

It was my turn to jump out of my chair.

"It's nobody in particular," she explained, laughing at theexpression of my face: "only an ideal. I've never met the kindof man I mean."

"Tell me about him. What does he look like?"

"Oh, he might look very much like you."

"How dear of you to say that! Well, what is it that he does thatI don't do? Just say the word,--teetotal, vegetarian, aeronaut,theosophist, superman. I'll have a try at it, Gladys, if youwill only give me an idea what would please you."

She laughed at the elasticity of my character. "Well, in thefirst place, I don't think my ideal would speak like that,"said she. "He would be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapthimself to a silly girl's whim. But, above all, he must be a manwho could do, who could act, who could look Death in the face andhave no fear of him, a man of great deeds and strange experiences. It is never a man that I should love, but always the glories he hadwon; for they would be reflected upon me. Think of Richard Burton! When I read his wife's life of him I could so understand her love! And Lady Stanley! Did you ever read the wonderful last chapterof that book about her husband? These are the sort of men thata woman could worship with all her soul, and yet be the greater,not the less, on account of her love, honored by all the worldas the inspirer of noble deeds."

She looked so beautiful in her enthusiasm that I nearly broughtdown the whole level of the interview. I gripped myself hard,and went on with the argument.

"We can't all be Stanleys and Burtons," said I; "besides, wedon't get the chance,--at least, I never had the chance. If Idid, I should try to take it."

"But chances are all around you. It is the mark of the kind ofman I mean that he makes his own chances. You can't hold him back. I've never met him, and yet I seem to know him so well. There areheroisms all round us waiting to be done. It's for men to do them,and for women to reserve their love as a reward for such men. Look at that young Frenchman who went up last week in a balloon. It was blowing a gale of wind; but because he was announced to gohe insisted on starting. The wind blew him fifteen hundred milesin twenty-four hours, and he fell in the middle of Russia. That wasthe kind of man I mean. Think of the woman he loved, and how otherwomen must have envied her! That's what I should like to be,--enviedfor my man."

"I'd have done it to please you."

"But you shouldn't do it merely to please me. You should do itbecause you can't help yourself, because it's natural to you,because the man in you is crying out for heroic expression. Now, when you described the Wigan coal explosion last month,could you not have gone down and helped those people, in spiteof the choke-damp?"

"I did."

"You never said so."

"There was nothing worth bucking about."

"I didn't know." She looked at me with rather more interest. "That was brave of you."

"I had to. If you want to write good copy, you must be where thethings are."

"What a prosaic motive! It seems to take all the romance outof it. But, still, whatever your motive, I am glad that you wentdown that mine." She gave me her hand; but with such sweetnessand dignity that I could only stoop and kiss it. "I dare say Iam merely a foolish woman with a young girl's fancies. And yetit is so real with me, so entirely part of my very self, that Icannot help acting upon it. If I marry, I do want to marry afamous man!"

"Why should you not?" I cried. "It is women like you who bracemen up. Give me a chance, and see if I will take it! Besides, asyou say, men ought to MAKE their own chances, and not wait untilthey are given. Look at Clive--just a clerk, and he conqueredIndia! By George! I'll do something in the world yet!"

She laughed at my sudden Irish effervescence. "Why not?" she said. "You have everything a man could have,--youth, health, strength,education, energy. I was sorry you spoke. And now I am glad--soglad--if it wakens these thoughts in you!"

"And if I do----"

Her dear hand rested like warm velvet upon my lips. "Not anotherword, Sir! You should have been at the office for evening dutyhalf an hour ago; only I hadn't the heart to remind you. Some day,perhaps, when you have won your place in the world, we shall talkit over again."

And so it was that I found myself that foggy November eveningpursuing the Camberwell tram with my heart glowing within me, andwith the eager determination that not another day should elapsebefore I should find some deed which was worthy of my lady. But who--who in all this wide world could ever have imagined theincredible shape which that deed was to take, or the strangesteps by which I was led to the doing of it?

And, after all, this opening chapter will seem to the reader tohave nothing to do with my narrative; and yet there would havebeen no narrative without it, for it is only when a man goes outinto the world with the thought that there are heroisms all roundhim, and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow anywhich may come within sight of him, that he breaks away as I didfrom the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystictwilight land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards. Behold me, then, at the office of the Daily Gazette, on the staffof which I was a most insignificant unit, with the settleddetermination that very night, if possible, to find the questwhich should be worthy of my Gladys! Was it hardness, was itselfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for herown glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle age; butnever to ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love.