“That, at all events, is all I have to say.”

Sir Charles nodded and drew the case of forms close to him.  There was something more then.  There always is something more, which isn’t told, he reflected, and the worst of it is, the something more which isn’t told is always the real reason.  Men go to the confessional with a reservation; the secret chamber where they keep their sacred vessels, their real truths and inspirations, as also their most scarlet sins—­that shall be opened to no one after early youth is past unless it be—­rarely—­to one woman.  There was another reason at work in Harry Luttrell, but Sir Charles Hardiman was never to know it.  With a shrug of his shoulders he took a pencil from his pocket, filled up one of the forms and handed it to Luttrell.

“That’s what I should reply.”

He had written: 

     “I am travelling to London to-morrow to apply for
     transfer.—­Luttrell.”

Luttrell read the telegram with surprise.  It was not the answer which he had expected from the victim of the flesh-pots in front of him.

“You advise that?” he exclaimed.

“Yes.  My dear Luttrell, as you know, you are a guest very welcome to me.  But you don’t belong.  We—­Maud Carstairs, Tony Marsh and the rest of us—­even Mario Escobar—­we are the Come-to-nothings.  We are the people of the stage door, we grow fat in restaurants.  From three to seven, you may find us in the card-rooms of our clubs—­we are jolly fine fellows—­and no good.  You don’t belong, and should get out while you can.”

Luttrell moved uncomfortably in his chair.

“That’s all very well.  But there’s another side to the question,” he said, and from the deck above a woman’s voice called clearly down the stairway.

“Aren’t you two coming?”

Both men looked towards the door.

“That side,” said Hardiman.

“Yes.”

Hardiman nodded his head.

“Stella Croyle doesn’t belong either,” he said.  “But she kicked over the traces.  She flung out of the rank and file.  Oh, I know Croyle was a selfish, dull beast and her footprints in her flight from him were littered with excuses.  I am not considering the injustice of the world.  I am looking at the cruel facts, right in the face of them, as you have got to do, my young friend.  Here Stella Croyle is—­with us—­and she can’t get away.  You can.”

Luttrell was not satisfied.  His grey eyes and thin, clean features were troubled like those of a man in physical pain.

“You don’t know the strange, queer tie between Stella Croyle and me,” he said.  “And I can’t tell you it.”

Hardiman grew anxious.  Luttrell had the look of a man overtrained, and it was worry which had overtrained him.  His face was a trifle too delicate, perhaps, to go with those remorseless sharp decisions which must be made by the men who win careers.