As I drew near, Farrar himself emerged from behind the
sail and asked me, with a great show of nonchalance, what I wanted.
"To tow you back for lunch, of course," I answered, used to his ways.
He threw me a line, which I made fast to the stern, and then he
disappeared again. I thought this somewhat strange, but as the boat was
a light one, I towed it in and hitched it to the wharf, when, to my great
astonishment, there disembarked not Farrar, but Miss Trevor. She leaped
lightly ashore and was gone before I could catch my breath, while Farrar
let down the sail and offered me a cigarette. I had learned a lesson in
appearances.
It could not have been very long after this that I was looking over my
batch of New York papers, which arrived weekly, when my eye was arrested
by a name. I read the paragraph, which announced the fact that my friend
the Celebrity was about to sail for Europe in search of "color" for his
next novel; this was already contracted for at a large price, and was to
be of a more serious nature than any of his former work. An interview
was published in which the Celebrity had declared that a new novel was
to appear in a short time. I do not know what impelled me, but I began
at once to search through the other papers, and found almost identically
the same notice in all of them.
By one of those odd coincidents which sometimes start one to thinking,
the Celebrity was the subject of a lively discussion when I reached the
table that evening.
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