fearful when he matched himself against a man of gentle birth and
gentle breeding, and one who, like King, was part of a world of
which he knew little, and to which, in his ignorance concerning
it, he attributed many advantages that it did not possess. He
believed that he would always lack the mysterious something which
these others held by right of inheritance. He was still young
and full of the illusions of youth, and so gave false values to
his own qualities, and values equally false to the qualities he
lacked. For the next week he avoided Miss Langham, unless there
were other people present, and whenever she showed him special
favor, he hastily recalled to his mind her failure to sympathize
in his work, and assured himself that if she could not interest
herself in the engineer, he did not care to have her
interested in the man. Other women had found him attractive in
himself; they had cared for his strength of will and mind, and
because he was good to look at. But he determined that this one
must sympathize with his work in the world, no matter how
unpicturesque it might seem to her. His work was the best of
him, he assured himself, and he would stand or fall with it.

It was a week after the visit to the mines that President Alvarez
gave a great ball in honor of the Langhams, to which all of the
important people of Olancho, and the Foreign Ministers were
invited. Miss Langham met Clay on the afternoon of the day set
for the ball, as she was going down the hill to join Hope and her
father at dinner on the yacht.

``Are you not coming, too?'' she asked.

``I wish I could,'' Clay answered. ``King asked me, but a