loss of place.

Clay laughed and shrugged his shoulders. He knew that he was not
in that class; if he did good work it was because his self-
respect demanded it of him; he did not work for Langham or the
Olancho Mining Company (Limited). And yet he turned with almost
a feeling of resentment toward the white yacht lying calmly in
magnificent repose a hundred yards from his porch.

He could see her as clearly in her circle of electric lights as
though she were a picture and held in the light of a stereopticon
on a screen. He could see her white decks, and the rails of
polished brass, and the comfortable wicker chairs and gay
cushions and flat coils of rope, and the tapering masts and
intricate rigging. How easy it was made for some men! This
one had come like the prince in the fairy tale on his magic
carpet. If Alice Langham were to leave Valencia that next day,
Clay could not follow her. He had his duties and
responsibilities; he was at another man's bidding.

But this Prince Fortunatus had but to raise anchor and start in
pursuit, knowing that he would be welcome wherever he found her.
That was the worst of it to Clay, for he knew that men did not
follow women from continent to continent without some assurance
of a friendly greeting. Clay's mind went back to the days when
he was a boy, when his father was absent fighting for a lost
cause; when his mother taught in a little schoolhouse under the
shadow of Pike's Peak, and when Kit Carson was his hero. He
thought of the poverty of those days poverty so mean and hopeless
that it was almost something to feel shame for; of the days that