The days dragged into weeks and the weeks into months—empty months to the heart of the girl who waited, dreading, yet hoping for word from the man she loved. Yet knowing, deep down in her heart, she would hear no word.
He would come to her—would answer the call of her great love—would beat down the barriers and in the flush of victory would claim her as his own; or, in the everlasting silence of the weird realm of missing men, be lost to her forever.
Daily she scanned the newspapers. Not front pages whose glaring headlines flaunted world-rumblings, politics, and the illness of rich men's dogs, but tiny cable-whispers from places far from the beaten track, places forgotten or unknown, whose very names breathed mystery; whispers that hinted briefly of life-tragedies, of action and the unsung deeds of men.
And as she read, she mused.
A tramp steamer dashed upon the saw-tooth rocks off Sarawak. Thirty perish—seven saved—no names. "Where is Sarawak? Is it possible that he——?"
Four sailors killed in the rescue of a girl from a dive in Singapore. Investigation ordered—no names. "He would have done that."
The rum-sodden body of a man, presumably a derelict American, picked up on the bund at Papiete; no marks of identification save the tightly clutched photograph of a well-dressed young woman. "Had he given up the fight? And was this the end?"
Eight revolutionist prisoners taken by General Orotho in yesterday's battle were shot at sunrise this morning before the prison wall of Managua.
One, an American, faced the firing squad with a laugh, and the next instant pitched forward, his body riddled with bullets. "He would have laughed! Would have played gladly the game with death and, losing—laughed!"
Each day she read the little lines of the doings of men; unnamed adventurers whose deeds were virile deeds; rough men, from whose contaminating touch society gathers up her silken skirts and passes by upon the other side; unlovely men, rolled-sleeved and open-throated, deep-seamed of face, and richly weather-tanned of arm, who tread roughshod the laws of little right and wrong; who drink red liquor and swear lurid oaths and loud; but who, shoulder to shoulder, redden the gutters of Singapore with their hearts' blood in the snatching of a young girl from danger.