The Steady Flame

San Francisco was in her blood -- had been all her life -- but Lincoln Haley was in her blood, too. A few days before, Link, artist to his fingertips and a member of the wild tribe of Haleys who scorned convention as they would the plague, had vanished again into that mysterious and glamorous world that Dale up to now had only dreamed of.

Dale Matheson's mind was made up. She, too, would go to New York. But she would look up Link only after she had acquired a job on her own.

Getting a room in the Village, a job as ad writer for Honeymoon, Inc., getting acquainted with her unpredictable but fascinating boss, Abar Decolis, and with her co-worker, quiet, dependable Charlie Norris, kept Dale busy those first few weeks.

It wasn't too much of a coincidence that Dale should eventually run into Link Haley in the Village, for Link, too, was a part of Bohemia. Just as Nora Ames was. Dimly Dale remembered hearing that the lovely Nora had had some part in Link Haley's phenomenal rise to success—but that Nora loved Link had never figured in Dale's dream of her life with Link.

When Abar Decolis suggested that Dale go to Fire Island to repost on the honeymooners in Honeymoon Collage, it was in a sense a reprieve. And on Fire Island, once more a part of the sea, the sun, and the sand—the flying nymph of Link's canvases—Dale was to find the answer to all her wonderings.