The editor of the "San Francisco Clarion" tilted his chair far back and look quizzically at the young man sitting beside his desk. "Sure I remember you," he remarked. "Did some Sunday work for us some time ago, didn't you?"

"Yes, a little feature stuff when I was in college."

"And now you want to go it strong, eh? Well, we've been rather disorganized in here since the war. There's been a constant stream of reporters coming and going. But things are settling down a little now and we're not taking on anybody who doesn't want to stick. Planning to be in the city right along, are you?"

"Well, I'll be perfectly frank with you about that. I'm not. I've got to go East as soon as I get a little money. But I'm not planning to stay there. I'm coming back for good as soon as I've closed up my business."

"Why not close up the Eastern business first?"

"Can't. It's not ripe yet." There was a note of grimness in the young man's voice. "I don't know just when it will be, either. But when I do go back, I don't think it will take me long to finish it. Don't give me a reporter's job if I don't look good to you. Put me on to some feature stuff for a while."

"All right. Sit in, and I'll give you a line on a few things I'd like to have hunted down."

When he left the office half an hour later, Kenwick sought the public library. There he spent the entire afternoon and a part of the evening. It was about nine o'clock when he entered the St. Germaine, a modest hotel in the uptown district. The night clerk cast an inquiring glance in search of his suit-case.

"My baggage hasn't come yet," the prospective guest explained tranquilly. "It may be in to-morrow. If you want to know anything about me, call Allen Boyer at the 'Clarion' office."

When he had been shown to his room on the fifth floor he lighted the lamp on the stand near his bed and became absorbed in the contents of one of the weekly magazines. He read until very late and then snapped out the light, cursing himself for having abused his eyes on the eve of taking a new position.

The next morning he was out early, eager to hunt down one of the stories that Boyer had suggested. As he swung out into the exhilaration of the crisp November morning on the scent of an assignment some of the old self-assurance and buoyancy came back to him.

Half an hour after he had left the hotel, the revolving doors swung round the circle to admit a man with prosperous leather suit-case and "freckled" eyes. The day clerk handed him a pen and registration-slip. He was beginning to sign, after a curt question about the rates, when the blond cashier, perched on a stool in the wire cage adjoining the desk, pushed a similar slip of paper toward the clerk. "Can't quite make out that name," she confessed. "Looks like Renwich. Do you get it?"

The desk official glanced at it with the casually professional air of one to whom all the mysteries of chirography are as an open book. "It's Kenwick. Plain as day—Roger Kenwick."

The pen slid from the fingers of the man on the other side of the desk. For a moment, self-possession deserted Richard Glover. He stood there staring hard at the ugly blot which he had made across his own signature. Then he crumpled the bit of paper, threw it into the waste-basket, and, suit-case in hand, went out into the street.

The day clerk darted a contemptuous glance after his disappearing figure. "Some nut," he remarked. "Told me the terms were all right and then got cold feet. I'll bet he's a crook."

"Sure he's a crook." The blond cashier spoke with cheerful authority. "I could have told you that when he first came in. I can size 'em up as far off as the front door. And I had him posted on the 'Losses by Default' page before he'd set down his bag."

The day clerk regarded her musingly. "He had a bag, though, and that's more than this Kenwick fellow showed. But Brown thought he was all right and let him have 526. Did you notice him this morning? Tall, dark fellow, young but with hair a little gray around the temples."

"Ye-a. High-brow. Looks like he was here for his health. Probably broke down in some government job."

"No, he's a newspaper man."

"Let's see where he's from?" She reached for the slip.

"New York. Well, I slipped a cog. I would have said he was a Westerner."

"That's right. That last chap looked more like New York to me. But you never can tell. And something seemed to hit him all wrong about this place."

With this conclusion Richard Glover was in complete accord. As he walked down Geary Street clutching his heavy bag, he was conscious with every nerve of his being that something had struck him decidedly wrong about the St. Germaine. "It might be just a coincidence," he reassured himself. "It's undoubtedly just a coincidence but—but that isn't such a very common name. My God! I begin to feel like a spy caught in his own trap."

With scarcely more than a glance at the name above the entrance he turned into the lobby of another hotel and signed for a room. It was almost noon when he appeared again and wrote a letter at one of the lobby desks. It was not a long letter, hardly more than a note, but its composition consumed almost an hour and a half a dozen sheets of stationery, which were successively torn to bits and thrown into the waste-basket. And then at last the final sheet met the same fate and Richard Glover sat tapping the desk softly with the edge of the blotter.

"No, I won't write; I'll just go," he decided. "For asking if I may come almost invites a refusal. And then it takes longer. I'll go up there this afternoon. The secret of getting what you want out of people is to take them off guard."

Following this policy he set out in the late afternoon to pay a call. At the door of the uptown address he was met by a colored maid. She offered him neither hope nor despair but agreed to present his card.

And in front of the living-room fire Marcreta Morgan read the card and flicked it across to her brother. "I don't think I care to see anybody to-day," she said. "It's your first night at home, and there's so much to talk about."

"Don't know him," Clinton decided. "Somebody you met while I was away?"

"Oh, yes, you know him, Clint. You introduced me to him yourself. Don't you remember he came here one night before you went to Washington and asked you to analyze some specimens of mineral water."

"Oh, that fellow! Has he been hanging around here ever since?"

"Well, no. I can't say that he has hung around exactly. But of late he has called rather often. He's really quite entertaining in some ways. You were very much interested in his specimens."

"In his specimens, yes."

It may have been that she resented his implied dislike. It may have been for some other reason. But Marcreta suddenly reversed her decision. "Show him in, please," she ordered. And the next moment the visitor stood in the doorway.

It was apparent as he crossed the long room that he had not expected to meet any one save his hostess. But he responded warmly to Clinton's handshake and drew up a chair for himself opposite Marcreta. "It's a pleasant surprise to find you here, Mr. Morgan," he said. "I thought you were still in the service at Washington. But it's time for every one to be getting home now, isn't it?"

Clinton Morgan surveyed him silently. It struck him that his guest was very much at home himself. For a time the conversation followed that level, triangular form of talk which so effectually conceals purpose and personality. Then Clinton excused himself on the plea that he had some unpacking to do, and Marcreta and Richard Glover were left alone.

"It's been a long time since I've seen you, Mr. Glover," she said. "You haven't been in the Bay region lately?"

"No, I've not been able to get away." His tone indicated that he had chafed under this pressure of adverse circumstance. "But it's good to get back now," he went on. "I'm always glad to get back—here."

She ignored the new ardent note in his voice. "But the southern part of the State is beautiful," she said. "Mont-Mer, particularly, is so beautiful that it makes the soul ache."

The words seemed to startle him. His eyes left the camouflaged log of wood in the fireplace and fixed themselves steadily upon her. "How do you know? How do you, San Francisco-bound, know?"

"I have just returned from there. My brother and I arrived home the same day. I spent a week near Mont-Mer visiting my friends, the Paddingtons. Do you know them?"

"No. But I think I know their home. They call it 'Utopia,' I believe?"

"Yes. And until I saw it I had always thought that Utopia was a myth."

"Mont-Mer," he mused, "does look rather like a fairy-story come true, doesn't it? There's something perilously seductive about it. It's a place where people go to forget."

"I have heard that said about it, but somehow it didn't make that kind of an appeal to me. I had the feeling that in such a place as that every sorrow of life is a bleeding wound. There's a terrible cruelty about that tropical sort of beauty. It drives memories in, not out."

For some unaccountable reason the tensity of her tone annoyed him. "You didn't like it then?"

"It's beautiful, as I have said, but—I shall never go there again."

"The place you ought to see," he told her, "is Cedargrove, about two hours' trip to the south."

"That's where the mineral springs are?"

"Yes. And what I really came to tell you to-day is that I've bought the controlling interest in the springs. It was after your brother had given me his final analysis of the water last year that I decided to do it. He said, you know, that in his opinion the medicinal ingredients equaled that of the waters of Carlsbad. I've made great plans. You see, there are twenty acres, and so far we've found eighteen springs. We've been bottling the stuff for several months now and it's selling like hot cakes. The next step is a hotel. It's not to be too colossal, but unique in every respect. That's what takes in California. Show people that you've got 'something different' and they'll jump to the conclusion that because it's different it must be desirable. That's America. I've had other chemists besides your brother tell me that the water is wonderful. The best doctors in the South declare that those springs are a bigger find than a gold mine."

He had warmed to his theme now and his amber eyes glowed. And she followed his words with that quick responsiveness that was all unconsciously one of her chief charms. "And what are your advertising plans?" she asked.

It was like a fresh supply of gasolene to an engine. He plunged into stupendous plans for a publicity campaign. "I'm doing most of the copy work myself so far. I love the advertising game. I love telling people what they want and making them want it. I'm calling it 'The Carlsbad of America.' That will get the health-seekers, and health-seekers will pay any price."

For half an hour he talked, going into every detail of his plan. And then all at once he stopped abruptly as though he had grown suddenly weary of Carlsbad. She sat gazing into the fire, waiting in sympathetic silence, for him to resume the subject. But he didn't resume it. When he spoke again, his tone had changed as well as his theme. For the first time the conversation became keenly personal. He talked about himself with a humility that was quite new and, to his listener, somewhat startling.

"I don't think it can be a complete surprise to you," he said, "to know how much I need you; how much I depend upon your sympathy and understanding. You must have guessed something of my feeling. You are too intuitive not to have guessed."

Her frank, blue-gray eyes were fixed upon him with an expression that baffled him, yet gave him hope. "No, it is not quite unexpected," she admitted. "But I didn't realize that it had gone quite so far. It seems to have all happened rather suddenly. We haven't known each other very long; not nearly long enough for anything like this."

"No. But I've been looking for you all my life. That ought to count for something."

"For something—yes. But not for so much as—that."

"Love isn't a matter of time," he told her.

"No. But it's a matter of exploration. It's a matter of finding each other. And in the half a dozen times that you have called here, Mr. Glover, we haven't talked about the finding kind of things. No, we don't know each other. We don't know each other half well enough to consider anything like this."

"But we can get to know each other better. Is there any reason why we should not do that?"

She pondered this for a moment. "Well, for one thing, there is distance."

"There is no longer distance," he pleaded eagerly. "For I have severed my connections with Mont-Mer."

"Oh!" He couldn't tell whether the exclamation emanated from pleasure or merely surprise. "You severed your connections there because of this new Carlsbad plan?"

"Partly because of that. But chiefly because a secretaryship to a rich man doesn't get one anywhere."

"I suppose not."

Still he couldn't decide whether her interest now was genuine or only courteous. But she would give him no further encouragement than to allow him to call occasionally. And with this permission he went away well content.

Ten minutes after he heard the front door close, Clinton, in a dressing-gown and slippers, appeared on the threshold of his sister's room. "Gone, at last?" he queried. "What's Glover doing up here anyway? I thought he was securely anchored with a millionaire hermit down South."

She spoke without turning from the dressing-table where she was shaking her long dark hair down over an amethyst-colored negligÉe. "You don't like him, do you?"

"No, I can't say that I do."

"Why not?"

Before the directness of the question he felt suddenly shamefaced, as a man always does who condemns one of his own sex before a woman on insufficient evidence. "Oh, he's all right, of course. I have no reason really for disliking the fellow, except——Well, he seems to like you too much. And he's not your style. What did he want to-night?"

"He wanted to tell me about a new scheme he has, a really wonderful enterprise, Clint, for turning that mineral water place into a health-resort. He's taken over most of the stock and he talked glowingly about it."

"He does talk well; I'll admit that. But who is going to capitalize this venture?"

His sister smiled. "Well, Clinton, I could hardly ask him that, you know."

"No, I suppose not. And if you had, I imagine that he would hardly have liked to answer it. Anyhow, he's cheered you up, and I ought to be grateful to him for that. It was a mistake for you to take that trip to Mont-Mer, Crete. It was too much for you."

She made no response to this, and her brother, noting the delicately flushed face and languid movements, told himself reproachfully that the mistake was in going away and leaving her to struggle alone with the hospital venture. He sat down on a cedar chest beside the window.

"Let's retint the whole lower floor, Crete," he suggested, seizing upon the first change of topic that offered itself. "Now that this place is to be a home again and not a sanitarium, let's retint and get the public institution smell out of it."

She laid down the ivory brush and turned to him. But her gaze was abstracted, and when she spoke in a musing voice, her words showed that she had not been listening. "Clinton, have you ever figured out just how much of the Coalinga oil stock belongs to me?"

He had been sitting with one knee hugged between his arms. Now he released it and brought himself upright upon the cedar chest.

"Why, no, I haven't. I don't think it makes much difference, while we're living together, sharing everything this way."

She got up from the dressing-table and walked over to the far window, drawing the deep lace collar of the amethyst negligÉe up about her ears as though to screen herself from his view. Out on the bay the lighted ferry-boats plied their silent passage, and on the Key Route pier an orange-colored train crawled cautiously, like a brilliant caterpillar, across a thread of track. Marcreta, gazing out into the clear soft dusk, sent a question backward over her shoulder.

"Would it be very much trouble to go over our properties some time and—make a division?"

"No, it wouldn't be much trouble, and I suppose it would be much more businesslike." He spoke briskly but she knew that her demand had astonished him. "You know," he admitted ruefully, "I don't pretend to be much of a business man. I think you may be right to insist upon an accounting."

"O Clint! I don't mean that. You know I don't mean that." Her voice held the stricken tone of the sensitive nature stabbed by the swift realization that it has hurt some one else. "You've been the best brother a girl ever had. You've been too good to me. I didn't mean that at all."

"What do you mean then, Crete?"

Her answer seemed to grope its way through an underbrush of tangled emotions. "I just thought it would be well for us each to know what we have because—you see, we may not always be living together like this."