Yet his popularity with our readers was tremendous. Letters, addressed
in feminine handwriting, came to him in our care every day, from all
over the land; and he was no doubt flattered by silly women who were
fascinated even more by his fiction after we printed his romantic
photograph. For he had a profile that captivated many a girl, eyes that
seemed to speak volumes; and no doubt there were numerous boudoirs that
contained his picture, just as his rooms contained so many likenesses of
Marguerite Davis.
I next heard of him in Egypt, where he said he was gathering colour for
a new romance. He stayed away several months, and then blew in one
morning, better-looking than ever, brown and clear-eyed. He had been all
over the Orient, and he said his note-book was full of material. Now he
could sit down quietly and write. He had so much to put on paper, he
told me.
But he hadn't. He dreamed adventure, he craved adventure; but nothing
ever happened to him. His trips were invariably on glassy seas. He
traveled by himself--he hadn't even one chum whom he cared to have share
his joys; and though he penetrated the jungles of Africa at one time,
the lions remained mysteriously in hiding, and the jaguars didn't even
growl.
I remember that this came out one night at a dinner party he and I went
to at the home of a friend of mine.
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