“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 again?” she repeated, puzzled.

“I mean that I have left them at home.  I have left them there, perhaps, to a certain extent deliberately,” he went on.  “You see, the idea is still with me.  I think that I shall rewrite them when I have settled down in America.  I fancy that I shall find myself in an atmosphere more conducive to the sort of work I want to do.  I would rather not be handicapped by the ghosts of my old failures.”

“One’s ghosts are hard sometimes to escape from,” she whispered.

He clutched nervously at the end of his rug.  She looked up and down along the row of chairs.  There were one or two slumbering forms, but most were empty.  There were no promenaders in sight.

“You know,” she asked, her voice still very low, “why I left the saloon a little abruptly this evening?”

“Why?” he demanded.

“Because,” she went on, “I could see the effect which Mr. Raymond Greene’s story had upon you; because I, also, was in that train, and I have better eyesight than Mr. Greene.  You were one of the two men who were walking along the towpath.”

“Well?” he muttered.

“You have nothing to tell me?”

“Nothing!”

She waited for a moment.

“At least you have not attempted to persuade me that you lingered underneath that bridge to escape from the rain,” she remarked.

“If I cannot tell you the truth,” he promised, “I am not going to tell you a lie, but apart from that I admit nothing.  I do not even admit that it was I whom you saw.”