“Well, it’s very interesting to hear you say so,” Norgate admitted.  “I wish I could wholly agree with you.”

Herr Selingman caught him by the sleeve.

“You are just a little,” he confided, “just a little suspicious, my young friend, you in your little island.  Perhaps it is because you live upon an island.  You do not expand.  You have small thoughts.  You are not great like we in Germany, not broad, not deep.  But we will talk later of these things.  I must tell you about our Kaiser.”

Norgate opened his lips and closed them again.

“Presently,” he muttered.  “See you later on.”

He strolled to his coupe, tried in vain to read, walked up and down the length of the train, smoked a cigarette, and returned to his compartment to find Herr Selingman immersed in the study of many documents.

“Records of my customers and my transactions,” the latter announced blandly.  “I have a great fondness for detail.  I know everything.  I carry with me particulars of everything.  That is where we Germans are so thorough.  See, I place them now all in my bag.”

He did so and locked it with great care.

“We go to dinner, is it not so?” he suggested.

“I suppose we may as well,” Norgate assented indifferently.

They found places in the crowded restaurant car.  The manufacturer of crockery made a highly satisfactory and important meal.  Norgate, on the other hand, ate little.  Herr Selingman shook his head.

“My young English friend,” he declared, “all is not well with you that you turn away from good food.  Come.  Afterwards, over a cigar, you shall tell me what troubles you have, and I will give you sound advice.  I have a very wide knowledge of life.  I have a way of seeing the truth, and I like to help people.”

Norgate shook his head.  “I am afraid,” he said, “that my case is hopeless.”

“Presently we will see,” Herr Selingman continued, rubbing the window with his cuff.  “We are arrived, I think, at Lesel.  Here will board the train one of my agents.  He will travel with us to the next station.  It is my way of doing business, this.  It is better than alighting and wasting a day in a small town.  You will not mind, perhaps,” he added, “if I bring him into the carriage and talk?  You do not understand German, so it will not weary you.”

“Certainly not,” Norgate replied.  “I shall probably drop off to sleep.”

“He will be in the train for less than an hour,” Herr Selingman explained, “but I have many competitors, and I like to talk in private.  In here some one might overhear.”

“How do you know that I am not an English crockery manufacturer?” Norgate remarked.

Herr Selingman laughed heartily.  His stomach shook, and tears rolled down his eyes.

“That is good!” he exclaimed.  “An English crockery manufacturer!  No, I do not think so!  I cannot see you with your sleeves turned up, walking amongst the kilns.  I cannot see you, even, studying the designs for pots and basins.”