“Miss Elizabeth Dalstan has promised to produce it,” he told her.

She looked at him in some surprise.

“Elizabeth Dalstan?” she repeated.  “Why, she’s one of our best actresses.”

“I understood so,” he replied.  “She has heard the story—­in fact I wrote out one of the scenes with her.  She is going to produce it as soon as it’s finished.”

“Well, all you poor idiots who write things have some fine tale to tell their typewriter,” she remarked.  “You seem as though you mean it, though.  Where did you meet Elizabeth Dalstan?”

“I came over with her on the Elletania,” he answered thoughtlessly.

She gave a little start.  Then she turned upon him almost in anger.

“Well, of all the simpletons!” she exclaimed.  “So that’s the way you give yourself away, is it?  Just here from Jamaica, eh!  Nothing to do with Douglas Romilly!  Never heard of the Elletania, did you!  I’d like to see you on the grid at police headquarters for five minutes, with one of our men asking you a few friendly questions!  You’d look well, you would!  You ought to go about with a nurse!”

Philip had all the appearance of a guilty child.

“You see,” he explained penitently, “I am new to this sort of thing.  However, you know now.”

“Still ready to swear that you’re not Douglas Romilly, I suppose?”

“On my honour I am not,” he replied.

“Kind of funny that you should have been on the steamer, after all,” she jeered.

“Perhaps so, but I am not Douglas Romilly,” he persisted.

She was silent for a moment, then she shrugged her shoulders.

“What do I care who your are?” she said.  “Here, help me off with this raincoat, please.  It’s warm in here, thank goodness!”

He looked at her as she sat by his side in her plain black dress, and was impressed for the first time with a certain unsuspected grace of outline, which made him for the moment oblivious of the shabbiness of her gown.

“You have rather a nice figure,” he told her with a sudden impulse of ingenuousness.

She turned upon him almost furiously.  Something in his expression, however, seemed to disarm her.  She closed her lips again.

“You are nothing but a child!” she declared.  “You don’t mean anything.  I’d be a fool to be angry with you.”

The waiter brought their steak.  Philip was conscious of something in his companion’s eyes which almost horrified him.  It was just that gleam of hungry desire which has starvation for its background.

“Don’t let’s talk,” he pleaded.  “There isn’t any conversation in the world as good as this.”

The waiter served them and withdrew, casting a curious glance behind.  They were, from his point of view, a strange couple, for, cosmopolitan though the restaurant was, money was plentiful in the neighbourhood, and clients as shabby as these two seldom presented themselves.  He pointed them out to a maitre d’hotel, who in his turn whispered a few words concerning them to a dark, lantern-jawed man, with keen eyes and a hard mouth, who was dining by himself.  The latter glanced at them and nodded.