"One may meet with many things on the highway of life--poverty,
disease, sorrow, treacheries. These are disagreeable, I admit, but
they are positive; one may overcome or, at least, forget them. But
suppose you stand confronting the negative of existence; the
highway is clear, indeed, but how interminable its vista, its
straight, smooth, and intolerably level stretch. That road is mine.

"Yes; I have tried the by-paths. Once I was shanghaied; twice I
have been marooned and by my own men. That last amused me--a
little. I was the second man to arrive at Bordeaux in the Paris-
Madrid race of 1903; during the Spanish-American war I acted as a
spy for the United States government in Barcelona.

"I made the common mistake of confounding the unusual with the
interesting. Romance is a shy bird, and not to be hunted with a
brass band. Where is the heart of life, if not at one's elbow? At
the farthest, one has only to turn the corner of the street. It is
useless to look for prodigies in the abyss, but every stream has
its straws that float; I have determined to watch and follow them.

"I want a companion, and so I advertised after my own fashion. I
selected you, tentatively, from the mob; later on I made the test
more complete. But you have no boutonniere; allow me."

He took a spray of orchid from the silver bowl in the centre of the
table and handed it to me.

I protested: "I have my gardenia--" I looked at my button-hole and
it was gone.