“Ah, good morning, Miss Chase,” he said.
The girl answered with a smile. Eden’s eye for beauty, developed by long experience in the jewel trade, had not failed him when he picked Miss Chase. She was an ash blonde with violet eyes; her manners were exquisite; so was her gown. Bob Eden, reluctant heir to the business, had been heard to remark that entering his father’s office was like arriving for tea in a very exclusive drawing-room.
Alexander Eden glanced at his watch. “In about ten minutes,” he announced, “I expect a caller—an old friend of mine—Madame Jordan, of Honolulu. When she arrives, show her in at once.”
“Yes, Mr. Eden,” replied the girl.
He passed on into his own room, where he hung up his hat, coat and stick. On his broad, gleaming desk lay the morning mail; he glanced at it idly, but his mind was elsewhere. In a moment he strolled to one of the windows and stood there gazing at the facade of the building across the way.
The day was not far advanced, and the fog that had blanketed San Francisco the night before still lingered in the streets. Staring into that dull gray mist, Eden saw a picture, a picture that was incongruously all color and light and life. His thoughts had traveled back down the long corridor of the years, and in that imagined scene outside the window, he himself moved, a slim dark boy of seventeen.
Forty years ago—a night in Honolulu, the gay happy Honolulu of the monarchy. Behind a bank of ferns in one corner of the great Phillimore living-room Berger’s band was playing, and over the polished floor young Alec
