Chapter One

THE REVOLVING DOOR REVOLVED, and into the bright mountain morning stepped a girl in slacks, a red ribbon around her hair. She was an uncommonly pretty girl, with blond curls showing that glint of gold which cannot be obtained with chemicals, and a skin with high, dappled flush. Yet her good looks went beyond prettiness, and often touched beauty. For the actual moulding of her face was plain, with a wistful, haunting sadness that reflected the soul of every homely girl in the world; but she had a curious trick of seeing far horizons, of smiling at invisible stars that gave her a rapt, exalted expression. In contrast with this, her figure was wholly sinful. It may have been part of the reason, indeed, for the spirituality of her face, for its breathtaking voluptuousness could not be concealed under any sort of clothing, and condemned her, no matter where she went or how, to the role of nude descending perpetual public staircases; thus she moved as though withdrawn into herself, with an abstracted, Godivanian saunter that was aware of nothing nearer than the sky.

She set off at this gait now, but at once noticed the little knot of children across the street, who had stopped playing and begun staring at her the moment she left the hotel. Smiling at them, she crossed over, shook hands, asked names, and distributed chewing gum from her handbag. Then she recrossed the street and resumed her way.

She had gone only a few steps, however, when she heard her name called, and turned to behold a spectacle as unusual in its way as she was in hers. Estimating conservatively, one would have said there was six feet, two-and-a-half inches of man approaching, mounted on two-and-a-half inches of bootheel, and mounting one foot of hat, making a ro