ed to him what there might have been of light in life. He
remembered, and it seemed to him that he could meet that ghostly image
which had risen from the black waters, without shrinking, almost
contemptuously. Fate had mocked him long enough. It was time, indeed,
that he helped himself.

He swung away from the solitude to the other side of the steamer, paused
in a sheltered spot while he lit a cigarette, and paced up and down the
more frequented ways. A soft voice from an invisible mass of furs and
rugs, called to him.

"Mr. Romilly, please come and talk to me. My rug has slipped--thank you
so much. Take this chair next mine for a few minutes, won't you? Mr.
Greene has rushed off to the smoking room. I think he has just been told
that there is a rival cinema producer on board, and he is trying to run
him to ground."

Philip settled himself without hesitation in the vacant place.

"One is forced to envy Mr. Raymond Greene," he sighed. "To have work in
life which one loves as he does his is the rarest form of happiness."

"What about your own?" she asked him. "But you are a manufacturer, are
you not? Somehow or other, that surprises me."

"And me," he acknowledged frankly. "I mean that I wonder I have
persevered at it so long."

"But you are a very young man!"

"Young or old," he answered, "I am one of those who have made a false
start in life. I am on my way to new things. Do you think, Miss Dalstan,
that your country is a good place for one to visit who seeks new things?"

She turned in her chair a little more towards him. Against the background
of empty spaces, the pale softness of her face seemed to gain a new
attractiveness.

"Well, that depends," she said reflectively, "upon what these new things
might be which you desire. For an ambitious business man America is a
great country."

"But supposing one had finished with business?" he persisted. "Supposing
one wanted to develop tastes and a gift for another method of life?"

"Then I should say that New York is the one place in the world," she told
him. "You are speaking of yourself?"

"Yes!"

"You have ambitions, I am sure," she continued. "Tell me, are they
literary?"

"I would like to call them so," he admitted. "I have written a play and
three stories, so bad that no one would produce the play or publish the
stories."

"You have brought them with you?"

He shook his head.

"No! They are where I shall never see them again."

"Never see them