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.

"I know that you can't go through the world without hurting people,"
cried Hardiman. "Neither you nor any one else, except the limpets. And
you won't escape hurting Stella Croyle, by abandoning your chances. Your
love-affair will end--all of that kind do. And yours will end in a
bitter, irretrievable quarrel after you have ruined yourself, and
because you have ruined yourself. You are already on the rack--make no
doubt about it. Oh, I have seen you twitch and jump with irritation--how
many times on this yacht!--for trumpery, little, unimportant things she
has said and done, which you would never have noticed six months ago;
or only noticed to smile at with a pleased indulgence."

L