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Copyright, 1918, 1919, by The Century Co.
[Illustration: "Now your finger-print, if you please"]
"I have a cabin below. I place it at the lady's disposal"
"After all, we aren't _yet_ living in the millennium, Julian. What I'm afraid of is that some day you'll be wanting to carry these notions of yours beyond the bounds of what's reasonable."
"You mean," said the other young man, with a flash in his dark eyes, "you mean you're afraid I may just chance to be honest in my 'notions,' as you call them, of a scheme of social justice."
As far off as you saw Gavan Napier, you knew him as a scion not only of the governing class, but in all likelihood of one of the governing families. Exactly the sort of man, you would say, to have Eton and Balliol in the past, a present as unpaid, private secretary to a member of his Majesty's Government, and a future in which the private secretary himself would belong to officialdom and employ pleasant, more or less accomplished, and more rather than less idle, young gentlemen to take down occasional notes, write an occasional letter, and see a boring constituent.
It was no boring constituent he was seeing now, out of those cool blue eyes of his, yet he followed with evident dissatisfaction the figure of a woman who had appeared an instant over the sand-dunes and who, as Napier turned to look at her instead of at his ball, changed her tack and sauntered inland.
"What do you suppose she's always hanging about for?" Napier asked his companion.
"Well, if _you_ do," retorted Napier, "I wish you'd tell me."
"I shall do nothing of the kind. You're quite conceited enough." Julian shouldered his golf clubs (it was against his principles to employ a caddie) and trudged on at the side of his unencumbered friend. The eyes of both followed the lady disappearing among the dunes.