To be sure, it was nothing more than might have been expected of a man whose undergraduate work in English had aroused the reluctant wonder of more than one instructor.  Nevertheless, the fact that he pulled stroke on the ’varsity crew had somewhat blinded other contemporaries to his more scholarly attainments.  Nor had anyone thought it probable, because of his father’s wealth, that Blair, in any event, would feel called upon to do much more than make a frolic of life.  No one, indeed, had been more taken aback than had his father to find him, a year after graduation, drudging over the assistant editor’s desk of a struggling magazine the payroll of which, to put it mildly, offered no financial inducements.

“It’s good practice for me, though, — quickest way to learn,” was all he vouchsafed when the older man remonstrated.

Yet, had that same father, shrewd capitalist that he was, but taken the trouble to reason back from premises evident enough, he might have been the first to realize that this tall son of his, with the keen gray eyes and a face the strength of which was but increased by the high cheek bones and squarely molded chin, was scarcely the type of man to sit idly by enjoying the fruits of another’s labor.

And now, after two years more of grinding apprenticeship, he had in mind something much bigger than the slender volume of verse, — an adventure into authorship more suited to his metal, — a story for which an intense personal sympathy would furnish fitting atmosphere, with the final spur to his ambition a letter from the Atlantic even at the moment stowed safely away in his pocket.

Some two hours later, after an unexpectedly excellent dinner in the luxurious dining room, he sauntered over to the hotel desk.  There was no more than the faintest probability that a clerk of the St. Catherine would be able to tell him how to reach a secret cavern bower above the Bay of Moons; still, he had to enter an opening wedge somewhere.  The one man on duty was for the moment occupied with another guest, and Blair, lighting his after-dinner cigar, prepared with leisurely patience to await his turn.

The guest happened to be a young woman, rather pretty, he casually decided, although her greatest claim to beauty lay more, perhaps, in the swift changes in expression of which her face was capable, than in any actual regularity of line.  For lack of anything better to do, Blair watched idly her encounter with the clerk.  There appeared to be some kind of misunderstanding.

“Awfully sorry it’s happened that way, Miss Hastings,” the man behind the desk was saying.  He lifted with genuine reluctance the key she had just laid down.  “We’d be mighty sorry to interfere with your work, but those small rooms always do go first.  You know that yourself.”

“I hadn’t heard about it, though.  I didn’t know they were all gone.”  Her voice quivered with disappointment.

Blair, whose vocation taught him a certain technical sympathy, shot a swift glance at her.  She couldn’t be more than twenty-two or thereabouts, he decided less casually, and went on to observe her still further.  She wore a shabby, broad-brimmed hat much faded as if from constant exposure to the sun, but the shadows in the coil of hair beneath were warmly golden.