"No. Will you take a seat?"

"Thanks."

One glance at the girl convinced R. Jones that he had been right.
Circumstances had made him a rapid judge of character, for in the
profession of living by one's wits in a large city the first
principle of offense and defense is to sum people up at first
sight. This girl was not on the make.

Joan Valentine was a tall girl with wheat-gold hair and eyes as
brightly blue as a November sky when the sun is shining on a
frosty world. There was in them a little of November's cold
glitter, too, for Joan had been through much in the last few
years; and experience, even though it does not harden, erects a
defensive barrier between its children and the world.

Her eyes were eyes that looked straight and challenged. They
could thaw to the satin blue of the Mediterranean Sea, where it
purrs about the little villages of Southern France; but they did
not thaw for everybody. She looked what she was--a girl of
action; a girl whom life had made both reckless and wary--wary of
friendly advances, reckless when there was a venture afoot.

Her eyes, as they met R. Jones' now, were cold and challenging.
She, too, had learned the trick of swift diagnosis of character,
and what she saw of R. Jones in that first glance did not impress
her favorably.