country, or any one of them, wished to marry him. No; he was fairly
modest, as men go. He suspected that the chief emotions he inspired were
curiosity and mischievousness. It was the thought of what those
uncounted thousands of gray-eyed girls must conceive as his attitude
towards them that hurt. Why, it was almost as though he had put a
matrimonial advertisement in the newspapers. When he pictured himself
looked upon as assuming to be a connoisseur of a certain type of
femininity he felt as keenly disgraced as if he had set himself up for
an Apollo.

In next morning's mail he noted an increased number of letters from
unknown gray-eyed correspondents. That settled it. Hurriedly packing a
capacious kit-bag, with the uncompleted manuscript on top, he took the
first train for Ocean Park. Where else could he find a more habitable
solitude than Ocean Park in early June? Once previously he had gone
there before the season opened, and he knew. Later on the popular big
seashore resort would seethe with vacationists. They would crowd the
hotels, over-flow the board walk, cover the sands, and polka-dot the
ocean. But in June the sands would be deserted, the board walk untrod,
the hotels empty.

And so it was. The landlord of The Empress welcomed him effusively, not
as Decatur Brown, author of _The Insurgent_ and seeker of an ideal girl
with gray eyes, but as plain, every-day Mr. Brown, whom Providence had
sent as a June guest. Decatur was thankful for it. The barren verandas
were grateful in his sight. When he had been installed in a corner
suite, spread out his writing things on a flat-topped table that faced
the sea, filled his ink-well, and lighted his pipe, he seemed to have
escaped from a threatening presence.