He rather thought that it would be lost; but that did not matter. She was his forever and ever. CHAPTER XVIII. HERBERT COURTLAND IS A MAN WHO HAS LIVED WITH HONOR. It was a long day. Toward evening he recollected that he had to leave cards upon his host and hostess of the Monday previous, but it was past six o’clock when he found himself at the top of the steps of Mr. Ayrton’s house. Before his ring had been responded to a victoria drove up with Phyllis, and in a moment she was on the step beside him. She looked radiant in the costume which she was wearing. He thought he had never seen a lovelier girl--he was certain that he had never seen a better-dressed girl. (Mr. Courtland was not clever enough to know that it is only the beautiful girls who seem well dressed in the eyes of men.) There was a certain frankness in her face that made it very interesting--the frankness of a child who looks into the face of the world and wonders at its reticence. He felt her soft gray eyes resting upon his face, as she shook hands with him and begged him to go in and have tea with her. He felt strangely uneasy under her eyes this evening, and his self-possession failed him so far as to make it impossible for him to excuse himself. It did not occur to him to say that he could not drink tea with her on account of having an appointment which he could not break through without the most deplorable results. He felt himself led by her into one of her drawing rooms, and sitting with his back to the window while her frank eyes remained on his face, asking (so he thought) for the nearest approach to their frankness in response, that a man who has lived in the world of men dare offer to a maiden whose world is within herself. “Oh, yes! I got the usual notification of the Order of the Bald Eagle,” said he, in reply to her inquiry. “I shall wear it next my heart until I die. The newspapers announced the honor that had been done to me the same morning.” “You cannot keep anything out of the papers,” said Phyllis. “Even if you want to--a condition which doesn’t apply to my case,” said he. “My publishers admitted to me last week that they wouldn’t rest easy if any newspaper appeared during the next month without my name being in its columns in some place.” “I’m sure they were delighted at the development of the _Spiritual Aneroid’s_ attack upon you,” said Phyllis. “They told me I was a made man,” said he. She threw back her head--it was her way--and laughed. Her laughter--all the grace of girlhood was in its ring; it was girlhood made audible--was lightening her fair face as she looked at him. “How funny!” she cried. “You fight your way through the New Guinea forests; you are in daily peril of your life; you open up a new country, and yet you are not a made man until you are attacked by a wretched newspaper.” “That is the standpoint of the people who sell books, so you may depend upon its being the standpoint of the people who buy books,” said he.