The other man paused.  He did not look at Piers very narrowly, but merely glanced towards him and then turned his eyes towards the wonderful, far-stretching blue below them.

“Yes, splendid,” he said quietly.  “Worth remembering—­a scene like this.”

His tone was absolutely impersonal.  He stood beside Piers for a moment or two, gazing forth into the infinite distance; then with a slight gesture of leave-taking he turned as if to continue his progress.

In that instant, however, Piers recovered himself sufficiently to speak.  His face was still deeply flushed, but his voice was steady enough as he turned fully and addressed the new-comer.

“Don’t you know me?  We have met before.”

The other man stopped at once.  He held out his hand.  “Yes, of course I know you—­knew you the moment I set eyes on you.  But I wasn’t sure that you would care to be recognized by me.”

“What on earth do you take me for?” said Piers bluntly.

He gripped the hand hard, looking straight into the calm eyes with a curious sense of being sustained thereby.  “I believe,” he said, with an odd impulse of impetuosity, “that you are the one man in the world that I couldn’t be other than pleased to see.”

The elder man smiled.  “That’s very kind of you,” he said.

He had the slow speech of one accustomed to solitude.  He kept Piers’ hand in his in a warm, firm grip.  “I have often thought about you,” he said.  “You know, I never heard your name.”

“My name is Evesham,” said Piers, with the quick, gracious manner habitual to him.  “Piers Evesham.”

“Thank you.  Mine is Edmund Crowther.  Odd that we should meet like this!”

“A piece of luck I didn’t expect!” said Piers boyishly.  “Have you only just arrived?”

“I came here last night from Marseilles.”  Crowther’s eyes rested on the smiling face with its proud, patrician features with the look of a man examining a perfect bronze.  “It’s very kind of you to welcome me like this,” he said.  “I was feeling a stranger in a strange land as I came up that path.”

“I’ve been watching you,” said Piers.  “I liked the business-like way you tackled it.  It was British.”

Crowther smiled.  “I suppose it has become second nature with me to put business first,” he said.

“Wish I could say the same,” said Piers; and then, with his hand on the other man’s arm:  “Come and have a drink!  You are staying for some time, I hope?”

“No, not for long,” said Crowther.  “It was yielding to temptation to come here at all.”

“Are you alone?” asked Piers.

“Quite alone.”

“Then there’s no occasion to hurry,” said Piers.  “You stay here for a bit, and kill time with me.”

“I never kill time,” said Crowther deliberately.  “It’s too scarce a commodity.”

“It is when you’re happy,” said Piers.

Crowther looked at him with a question in his eyes that he did not put into words, and in answer to which Piers laughed a reckless laugh.