"Helen, I have a new plot; a quite wonderful love-story; better than anything I have done yet. But the scene is laid in Central Africa, and I must go out there to get the setting vivid and correct. You remember how thrilled we were the other day, by the account of that missionary chap, who disappeared into the long grass, thirteen feet high, over twenty years ago; lived and worked among the natives, cut off from all civilisation; then, at last, crawled out again and saw a railway train for the first time in twenty-three years; got on board, and came home, full of wonderful tales of his experiences? Well--you know how, after he had been out there a few years, he found he desperately needed a wife; remembered a plucky girl he had known when he was a boy in England, and managed to get a letter home, asking her to come out to him? She came, and safely reached the place appointed, at the fringe of the wild growth. There she waited several months. But at last the man who had called to her in his need, crawled out of the long grass, took her to himself, and they crawled in again--man and wife--and were seen no more, until they reappeared many years later. Well--that true story has given me the idea of a plot, which will, I verily believe, take the world by storm! So original and thrilling! Far beyond any missionary love-stories." Helen's calm eyes looked into the excited shining of his. "Dear, why shouldn't a missionary's love-story be as exciting as any other? I don't quite see how you can better the strangely enthralling tale to which we listened." "Ah, don't you?" cried Ronald West. "That's because you are not a writer of romances! My dear girl, _two_ men crawled out of the long grass thirteen feet high, at the place where the woman was waiting! Two men--do you see? And the man who crawled out first was _not_ the man who had sent for her! _He_ turned up just too late. Now, do you see?" "I see," said Helen. "Thirteen is always apt to be an unlucky number."