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.

"Couldn't you find a room down in the village somewhere, - at Mrs.
Merrill's perhaps?" suggested the clerk.

"But Mrs. Merrill isn't here this spring." In spite of its quiver the
voice was very sweet.