a shore-boat waving my hat. And of all those along the rail, my
heart will tell me which is she!"

Then a barefooted Filipino boy handed him an unsigned cablegram.
It read: "If I wrote a thousand words I could not make it easier
for either of us. I am to marry Arthur Stedman in December."

Lee was grateful for the fact that he was not permitted to linger
in Manila. Instead, he was at once ordered up-country, where at a
one-troop post he administered the affairs of a somewhat hectic
province, and under the guidance of the local constabulary chased
will-o'-the-wisp brigands. On a shelf in his quarters he placed
the silver loving-cup, and at night, when the village slept, he
would sit facing it, filling one pipe after another, and through
the smoke staring at the evidence to the fact that once Frances
Gardner and he had been partners.

In these post-mortems he saw nothing morbid. With his present
activities they in no way interfered, and in thinking of the days
when they had been together, in thinking of what he had lost, he
found deep content. Another man, having lost the woman he loved,
would have tried to forget her and all she meant to him. But Lee
was far too honest with himself to substitute other thoughts for
those that were glorious, that still thrilled him. The girl could
take herself from him, but she could not take his love for her
from him. And for that he was grateful. He never had considered
himself worthy, and so could not believe he had been ill used. In
his thoughts of her there was no bitterness: for that also he was
grateful. And, as he knew he would not care for any other woman
in the way he cared for her, he preferred to care in that way,