“Been playing in England?” the young man asked.

Mr. Raymond Greene shook his head.

“When I am on business,” he explained, “I don’t carry my sticks about with me, and I tell you this last fortnight has been a giddy whirl for me.  I was in Berlin Wednesday night, and I did business in Vienna last Monday.  Ah! here comes Miss Dalstan.”

He rose ceremoniously to his feet.  A young lady who was still wearing her travelling clothes smiled at him delightfully and sank into the chair by his side.  During the little stir caused by her arrival, no one paid any attention to the man who had slipped into the other vacant place opposite.  Mr. Greene, however, when he had finished making known his companion’s wants to the steward, welcomed Philip Romilly genially.

“Now we’re a full table,” he declared.  “That’s what I like.  I only hope we’ll keep it up all the voyage.  Mind, there’ll be a forfeit for the first one that misses a meal.  Mr. Romilly, isn’t it?” he went on, glancing at his left-hand neighbour’s card once more.  “My name’s Raymond Greene.  I am an old traveller and there’s nothing I enjoy more, outside my business, than these little ocean trips, especially when they come after a pretty strenuous time on shore.  Crossed many times, sir?”

“Never before,” Philip answered.

“First trip, eh?” Mr. Greene remarked, mildly interested.  “Well, well, you’ve some surprises in store for you, then.  Let me make you acquainted with your opposite neighbour, Miss Elizabeth Dalstan.  I dare say, even if you haven’t been in the States, you know some of our principal actresses by name.”

Philip raised his head and caught a glimpse of a rather pale face, a mass of deep brown hair, a pleasant smile from a very shapely mouth, and the rather intense regard of a pair of wonderfully soft eyes, whose colour at that moment he was not able to determine.

“I have had the pleasure of seeing Miss Dalstan on the stage,” he observed.

“Capital!” Mr. Raymond Greene exclaimed.  “We haven’t met before, have we, Mr. Romilly?  Something kind of familiar in your face.  You are not by way of being in the Profession, are you?”

Romilly shook his head.

“I am a manufacturer,” he acknowledged.

“That so?” his neighbour remarked, a trifle surprised.  “Queer!  I had a fancy that we’d met, and quite lately, too.  I am in the cinema business.  You may have heard of me—­Raymond Greene?”

“I have seen some of your films,” Philip told him.  “Very excellent productions, if you will allow me to say so.”

“That’s pleasant hearing at any time,” Mr. Greene admitted, with a gratified smile.  “Well, I can see that we are going to be quite a friendly party.  That’s Mr. Busby on your right, Mr. Romilly—­some golfer, I can tell you!—­and his friend Mr. Caroll alongside.  The lady next you—­”

“My name is Miss Pinsent,” the elderly lady indicated declared pleasantly, replying to Mr. Greene’s interrogative glance.  “It is my first trip to America, too.  I am going out to see a nephew who has settled in Chicago.”