ere you go again! Well, every man to his taste. The
governor's lost interest in the _Ariel_--let me have her without a
reservation as to time limit. Don't care for flying myself. Necessary
to sit up. Like to lie on my back too well for that."

"You do yourself injustice."

"Now, now--don't preach. I've been expecting it."

"You needn't. I'm too busy with my own case to attend to yours."

"Lucky for me. I feel you'd be a zealous preacher if you ever got
started."

"What route do you expect to take?" pursued Richard, steering away from
dangerous ground.

Lorimer outlined it, in his most languid manner. One would have thought
he had little real interest in his plan, after all.

"It's great! You'll have the time of your life!"

"I might have had."

"You will have--you can't help it."

"Not without the man I want in the bunk next mine," said Belden Lorimer,
gazing through half-shut eyes at nothing in particular.

Richard experienced the severest pang of regret he had yet known.

"If that's true, old Lorry," said he slowly, "I'm sorrier than I can
tell you."

"Then--_come along_!" Lorimer looked waked up at last. He laid a
persuasive hand on Richard's arm.

There was a moment of tensity. Then:

"If I should do it," said Richard, regarding steadily a dog in the road
some hundred yards ahead, "would you feel any respect whatever for me?"

"Dead loads of it, I assure you."

"Sure of that?"

"Why not?"

"Be honest. Would you?"

"You promised me first," said Lorimer.

"I know I did. Such idle promises to play don't count when real life
asks for work--it's no good reminding me of that promise. Answer me
straight, now, Lorry--on your honour. If I should give in and go with
you, you'd rejoice for a little, perhaps. Then, some day, when you and
I were lying on deck, you'd look at me and think of me--against your
will--I don't say it wouldn't be against your will--you'd think of me as
a quitter. And you wouldn't like me quite as well as you do now. Eh? Be
honest."

Lorimer was silent for a minute. Then, to Richard's surprise, he gave an
assenting grunt, and followed it up with a reluctant, "Hang it all, I
suppose you're right. But I'm badly disappointed, just the same. We'll
let that go."

And let it go they did, parting, when they reached town, with the
friendliest of grips, and a new, if not wholly comprehended, interest
between them. As for Richard, he felt, somehow, as if he had nailed his
flag to th