A Soldier of the Legion

								

It seems too wonderful to be true."
"I've promised, haven't I?" She laughed half under her breath, a pretty,
tinkling laugh. "Honour bright, Max dear, you're the first man I ever
said 'yes' to. I hope I shan't be sorry!"
"I won't let you be sorry," whispered Max. "I'll do everything to make
you so happy you'll forget the theatre."
"If anything or anybody could make me do that, it would be you," she
answered, under cover of the music. "I believe you must be very
fascinating, or else I--but never mind---- Now let's stop dancing and
you'll show me the ring. I'm engaged for the next--and I can't wait till
you and I have another together."
Max took her to sit down at an end of the room uninfested by chaperons.
No one at all was there. He had the ring in some pocket, and, by dint of
sitting with his "back to the audience," hoped to go through the sacred
ceremony without being spied upon. The ring Billie had asked for was a
famous blue diamond, of almost as deep a violet as a star-sapphire, and
full of strange, rainbow gleams. It had belonged to a celebrated actress
who had married an Englishman of title, and on her death it had been
advertised for sale. Billie Brookton, who "adored" jewels, and whose
birthstone conveniently was the diamond, had been "dying for it." "She
was not superstitious," she said, "about dead people's things." Now the
blue diamond, with a square emerald on either side, and set in a band of
platinum, was hers. She took it between thumb and finger to watch the
sparks that came and went, deep under the sea-like surface of blue. As
she looked at the ring, Doran looked at her eyelashes.
Never, he thought, could any other woman since the world began have had
such eyelashes. They were extraordinarily long and thick, golden brown,
and black at the tips. The Omallaha girl who had been to New York
thought that Billie Brookton herself had had more to do than heaven in
the painting of those curled-up tips. But such a suggestion would have
been received with contempt by Max Doran, who at the threshold of
twenty-five considered himself a judge of eyelashes. (He was not; nor of
a woman's complexion; but believing in himself and in Billie, he was
happy.) Miss Brookton had a complexion nearly as white, and it seemed to
him--more luminous, more ethereal, than the string of pearls he had
given her a month in advance of her birthday. She said it would be her
twenty-third, and Max had been incredulous in the nicest way. He would
have supposed her to be nineteen at the most, if she had not been so
frank.
"Now, if you've looked at the ring enough off your finger, will you
let me put it on?" he begged. "I'll make a wish--a good wish: that you
shall never grow tired of your bargain. For it is a bargain, isn't it?
From the minute this ring is on your finger you're engaged to me."
"What will your beautiful mother say?" asked Billie, hanging back
daintily, and doing charming things with her eyelashes.