“Maybe.  If we could only have the full days and deposit the others and draw as we need them; but we can’t do it.  And yet each day means something; there ought always to be a little of it worth remembering.”

“Old parson!” cried Fitzgerald, with a jab of his elbow.

“All bally rot, eh?  I wish I could look at it that way.  Yet, when a man mopes as you are doing, when this sunset. . .”

“New one every day.”

“What’s the difficulty, Jack?”

“Am I walking around with a sign on my back?” testily.

“Of a kind, yes.”

Cathewe spoke so solemnly that Fitzgerald looked round, and saw that which set his ears burning.  Immediately he lowered his gaze and sought the water again.

“Have I been making an ass of myself, Arthur?”

“No, Jack; but you are laying yourself open to some wonder.  For three or four days now, except for the forty-eight hours on land there, you’ve been a sort of killjoy.  Even the admiral has remarked it.”

“Tell him it’s my liver,” with a laugh not wholly free of embarrassment.  “Suppose,” he continued, in a low voice; “suppose—­” But he couldn’t go on.

“Yes, suppose,” said Cathewe, taking up the broken thread; “suppose there was a person who had a heap of money, or will have some day; and suppose there’s another person who has but little and may have less in days to come.  Is that the supposition, Jack?  The presumption of an old friend, a right that ought never to be abrogated.”  Cathewe laid a hand on his young friend’s shoulder; there was a silent speech of knowledge and brotherhood in it such as Fitzgerald could not mistake.

“That’s the supposition,” he admitted generously.

“Well, money counts only when you buy horses and yachts and houses, it never really matters in anything else.”

“It is easy to say that.”

“It is also easy to learn that it is true.”

“Isn’t there a good deal of buying these days where there should be giving?”

“Not among real people.  You have had enough experience with both types to be competent to distinguish the one from the other.  You have birth and brains and industry; you’re a decent sort of chap besides,” genially.  “Can money buy these things when grounded on self-respect as they are in you?  Come along now; for the admiral sent me after you.  It’s the steward’s champagne cocktail; and you know how good they are.  And remember, if you will put your head into the clouds, don’t take your feet off the deck.”

Fitzgerald expanded under his tactful interpretation.  A long breath of relief issued from his heart, and the rending doubt was dissipated:  the vulture-shadow spread its dark pennons and wheeled down the west.  A priceless thing is that friend upon whom one may shift the part of a burden.  It seemed to be one of Cathewe’s occupations in life to absorb, in a kindly, unemotional manner, other people’s troubles.  It is this type of man, too, who rarely shares his own.