“I shall land in New York,” he told her, “with at least a thousand pounds.  That is about as much as I have spent in ten years.  There is the possibility of other money.  Concerning that—­well, I can’t make up my mind.  The thousand pounds, of course, is stolen.”

“So I gathered,” she remarked.  “Do you continue, may I ask, to be Douglas Romilly, the manufacturer?”

He shook his head a little vaguely.

“I haven’t thought,” he confessed.  “But of course I don’t.  I have risked everything for the chance of a new life.  I shall start it in a new way and under a new name.”

He was suddenly conscious of her pity, of a moistness in her eyes as she looked at him.

“I think,” she said, “that you must have been very miserable.  Above all things, now, whatever you may have done for your liberty, don’t be fainthearted.  If you are in trouble or danger you must come to me.  You promise?”

“If I may,” he assented fervently.

“Now I must hear the play as it stood in your thoughts when you wrote it,” she insisted.  “I have a fancy that it will sound a little gloomy.  Am I right?”

He laughed.

“Of course you are!  How could I write in any other way except through the darkened spectacles?  However, there’s a way out—­of altering it, I mean.  I feel flashes of it already.  Listen.”

The story expanded with relation.  He no longer felt confined to its established lines.  Every now and then he paused to tell her that this or that was new, and she nodded appreciatively.  They walked for a time, watched the seagulls, and bade their farewell to the Irish coast.

“You will have to re-write that play for me,” she said, a little abruptly, as she paused before the companionway.  “I am going down to my room for a few minutes before lunch now.  Afterwards I shall bring up a pencil and paper.  We will make some notes together.”

Philip walked on to the smoking room.  He could scarcely believe that the planks he trod were of solid wood.  Raymond Greene met him at the entrance and slapped him on the back: 

“Just in time for a cocktail before lunch!” he exclaimed.  “I was looking everywhere for a pal.  Two Martinis, dry as you like, Jim,” he added, turning round to the smoking room steward.  “Sure you won’t join us, Lawton?”

“Daren’t!” was the laconic answer from the man whom he had addressed.

“By-the-bye,” Mr. Raymond Greene went on, “let me make you two acquainted.  This is Mr. Douglas Romilly, an English boot manufacturer—­Mr. Paul Lawton of Brockton.  Mr. Lawton owns one of the largest boot and shoe plants in the States,” the introducer went on.  “You two ought to find something to talk about.”

Philip held out his hand without a single moment’s hesitation.  He was filled with a new confidence.

“I should be delighted to talk with Mr. Lawton on any subject in the world,” he declared, “except our respective businesses.”