"What kind of a book, Mrs. Bower?"
"I don't know. He didn't say. I am going to give him the front room in the south wing; then he will have a view of the river."
When Anne met the dark young man in the hall an hour later, she discovered that he had keen eyes and a mocking smile.
He stopped her. "Do we have to be introduced? I am going to stay here. Did Mrs. Bower tell you?"
"She told me you were writing a book."
"Don't tell anybody else; I'm not proud of it."
"Why not?"
He shrugged. "My stories are pot-boilers, most of them—with everybody happy in the end."
"Why shouldn't everybody be happy in the end?"
"Because life isn't that way."