Picture Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

■ ttt ) the wireless," he finished for her My. "Didn't you?" He demanded it lectly. She did not answer. "It is almost weird, isn't it, Miss .rant," he continued suddenly, "how oerson with any sort of individuality inot do anything without putting his : )r her — personality into it somehow? 3 ie can't speak ; one can't write ; one ffji i't even send a communication rough the air by wireless without isting it just his — or her — own way, i. d somehow different from any one e's. Every one is used to the strange t that no two persons can naturally ite in exactly the same way. And I ess regular telegraph operators, and en regular wireless operators, are etty well used, too, to the fact that a '0 persons can't even talk with an ectric current in the same way. Every ie must tap his key so as to mark him the other end. He can't even write his ries of dots and dashes like some one fee. But it seems almost weird somenes, doesn't it?" "It does," returned the girl. "But I low, too, that it's true. Harry — ither's regular operator — claimed he mid always tell whether a man was : eak or strong, steady or tired, or — rjipmetimes — afraid. He used to form jositive friends and enemies just from ie differences in the way different iperators used to talk to him. I know ie could almost always tell them apart." "Yes ; so please don't laugh at me now lor what I'm going to say. For I don't eceive myself into thinking that, from :ust your special way of talking over roe wireless, I could have imagined you at all adequately. But this is true, Miss Durant," he went on seriously. "That norning when first you called the San 'nan — I had heard about your father ; 1'ining, but nothing about you — I had qbeen trying to find out if the Irvessa -night be within communication. I got no answer. But I was still up there In our wireless room, just killing time n thinking up the sell I wanted to work on the people here at Manila this year, and then suddenly, you — a girl was talking to me from the receptors before me. "It certainly startled me to discover that from somewhere behind that circle of sea a girl was sending her nervous, impetuous personality to speak to me. I answered ; and then you told me who you were, and that you were going to PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY Manila. Well, I had just been thinking of what I was going to do with myself when I got back to Manila ; and I was wondering if I would meet that girl there and, if I should, what she might think of me. "Then, the next morning, when you crossed me and played with me the way you did " The girl raised her head, flushing deeply at the remembrance. "I was very foolish and childish to do that," she said. "I almost " "No, Miss Durant !" he interrupted. "In fact, if it hadn't been for the trouble I thought must be coming, that argument with you was the best part of all." He laughed. "Why, I'd been down there two long years, with nothing but saluting marines and sailors answering, 'Yes, sir,' and 'Very good, sir,' to every remark I'd made, till I was just praying for mutiny. And then you — a girl— just coming coolly within my communication radius to cross me and play with me that way ! "It was more like talking to you than anything else could be. And then you — did what you did there ; and I came and found it all out. You were going to Manila, and I had to come straight here, too. I tell you it made me think a lot that night of — of that girl who had been talking to me that way, and then had stood by to save her friends as you did. And I tell you I wanted to meet that girl mighty badly ; but I didn't want her to meet me — the way I'd always been. Collie's told you, you said, of the sort of things I'm known for about here ; I've always liked that sort of foolishness. But, somehow, thinking how I'd look to — I might as well say it plainly — to you, Miss Durant, made me see my foolishness a little differently." "I'm awfully sorry," the girl tried to reply lightly. "Don't be, please ! I'm not ! It's already done me, and will keep on doing me, a great deal more good, coming here just to see you this way, than any amount of amusing Manila. For you, laughing at me the way you have tonight, in spite of my coming here with the intention of being serious, have made me think of changing a good deal more than just any fooling about here." "You mean you're going to give up your command in the south?" Frances raised her eyes to his in a questioning gaze. "Dear old Collie has been talking to 25 you, hasn't he?" said Sommers, smiling. "Yes, I mean that," he continued seriously. "But, of course, I can't, just now." "On account of the trouble we stirred up down there?" "Oh, that didn't make any difference ! That wasn't a real attack — only a sort of half-hearted bluff. That's why almost no one was hurt. We all know that Bagol has been for months the headquarters of a lot of local chiefs who want to get up a rising. They are not hoping to accomplish much for themselves, of course. They are doing it for the political effect in America, and are waiting until international politics are in shape to make a demonstration effective ; and then they want to have an impressive uprising. We all know that they have been smuggling in arms for a long time, but they haven't enough yet to start a properly impressive demonstration. The attack on Mr. Pinckney's party was just by a few dozen irresponsible natives, not shooting to kill, I believe. They hoped, I think, just to get the arms the men carried by scaring them back to the boats. The chiefs, who are planning the rising and wanted to wait their time, were very angry over the attack. It gives the government an excuse for interfering, which we didn't have before. We can stop them from running arms now. So it has really helped us more than anything else, in spite of forcing me to go back to Bagol to-night." "You must go back to Bagol tonight?" She accented the word almost unconsciously. The officer did not reply at once. Hidden as they were behind the thick leaves of the growing plants, they were quite apart from the dancers on the floor. While they had been there, the band had blared out thrice, and had stopped again. Dick was conscious that several of his brother officers had come searching and inquiring vainly for Miss Durant, and that another was then waiting, scarcely ten feet away, to claim his dance. But the girl — though she, too, seemed to be conscious of this — gave no sign ; and the music and the chatter and the noise on the other side of the bank of leaves again smothered their voices. "Yes," replied Dick, at last. "In my report which I gave Admiral Barlow as soon as I came here, and which he has probably read, there is enough and more to send me back to Bagol to-night — at