“He must have been worth knowing—that father. Did they ever learn the boy’s name?”

“No. The little girl’s father would not let anybody try. Said he was probably the descendant of some proud old cotton king down South and would turn up some day, either very bad or very good—they always did. A reporter had taken a snapshot of him as he sat on the hospital cot, but her father took his camera from him by force and gave him fifty dollars in place of it. The little girl has the picture yet.”

“But if they had published the picture?”

“Oh, you didn’t know her father. He said it would be a violation of honor as between gentlemen. No, he had begun life a friendless boy himself, and he understood.”

“A beautifully told story. Tell me of the little girl who was saved.”

“There is the romance. The boy promised to come back when he became famous—”

“Ah!”

“But he has probably forgotten her, in his own struggles. She was nothing to him, after all; only a little girl child he had pulled out of the water. But she—well, as the years passed, he grew to be almost a god, in her memory. You see there were the old papers to read over, and the little picture, and the song he had given her. And there was the telling of it all, over and over, at school. Her romance became a living thing, an immortal thing.”

“I know. A thought conceived is a living thing. Expressed, it is immortal.”

“Then her mother died, and they built that beautiful window in memory of her, and then her father. Now, she is her own mistress, though an uncle imagines he is, in fact, as well as in law, her guardian. She comes nearer being his. They call her ‘a terror’ at home. Still, men have wanted to marry her, many of them, but she is unchanging in her faith that some day her hero will come back and claim her. What do you suppose her father said to her—his very last words?—‘wait for him until you are twenty-one. It takes a long time for a boy to become famous. I think I know him. He will come if he makes good, and when he does come, remember it’s fifty-fifty.’ She had never told her father of her dream, but he had guessed, and he smiled when he saw he had guessed right, and died with the smile on his face. So she waits, and waits, and waits, at times most unhappy. Do you suppose he will come back, King?”

“How could he? How could such a boy come 

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