“I'm a landed proprietor in your country,” she said. “I own ten whole shares of stock in a company of some sort.”
“Then you're my fellow citizen,” he claimed. “Perhaps it's one of the companies I'm interested in.”
She named it, and he was amused to learn that her little ownership was in the corporation which was fighting him and his plans most savagely. She did not mention that her father was a principal stockholder and an officer in that same corporation. Nor did Trent deem it necessary to define his position. He didn't wish to talk politics to this wonderful flower-woman next him. But he did wish, most determinedly, to keep those luminous eyes turned in his direction. What Charles Trent determinedly wished he usually got, and he achieved this particular end by talking so well that the fresh-bloomed diplomat on the farther side began presently to get fretful. As for Mr. Trent's right side, it mattered not a whit whether it knew what his left side was doing, for it was on his right that I sat. Carlo fell to telling Paula of the romance of the hunt for the treasure of water in a dry land—more thrilling to a pioneer of imagination than any search for gold or silver or copper because it meant something more basic than wealth: it meant life in a country which was dead. There were searches for lost canons and unmapped rivers; explorations of wild gorges where the adventurers in improvised boats shot down along thou-sand-foot-deep cracks in the earth toward unknown rapids, listening for the thunder of possible cataracts; and, out of all this rude peril, the growth of vast projects and the gathering in from far cities of dollars, pounds, francs, marks, and even roubles, that a desert land might flower and new cities arise.
“What about your own hairbreadth 'scapes in the imminent, deadly thingumbob—I never can remember the whole of a quotation?” she inquired. “You're very modest about your own share. Tell me the narrowest escape you ever had.”
He answered, thoughtfully: “Curiously enough, I fancy the narrowest escape I ever had was less than a block from here. I fell down between two houses.”
The girl's eyes widened suddenly. “On Our Square?”
“Yes. Except for the prosaic matter of the week's wash on a clothesline which shunted me off, I probably shouldn't be here to-day.”
“Mr. Trent,” said she slowly, “do you mind turning around this way? Farther. Thank you. Is that scar over your temple—”
“Yes. I got it there. How could you know?”
Then recognition flashed between them. They laughed excitedly, like two children. To the scandal of the bewildered Ambassador's ears, they then entered upon the following incredible conversation:—