by the same bar of
sunshine lying across his knees. He yawned, looked with disgust at his
stolidly sleeping neighbours, and wondered why he had decided to go to
Milan, and what on earth he should do when he got there. The difficulty
about trenchant decisions was that the next morning they generally left
one facing a void....

When the train drew into the station at Milan, he scrambled out, got
some coffee, and having drunk it decided to continue his journey to
Genoa. The state of being carried passively onward postponed action and
dulled thought; and after twelve hours of furious mental activity that
was exactly what he wanted.

He fell into a doze again, waking now and then to haggard intervals
of more thinking, and then dropping off to the clank and rattle of the
train. Inside his head, in his waking intervals, the same clanking and
grinding of wheels and chains went on unremittingly. He had done all his
lucid thinking within an hour of leaving the Palazzo Vanderlyn the
night before; since then, his brain had simply continued to revolve
indefatigably about the same old problem. His cup of coffee, instead of
clearing his thoughts, had merely accelerated their pace.

At Genoa he wandered about in the hot streets, bought a cheap suit-case
and some underclothes, and then went down to the port in search of a
little hotel he remembered there. An hour later he was sitting in the
coffee-room, smoking and glancing vacantly over the papers while he
waited for dinner, when he became aware of being timidly but intently
examined by a small round-faced gentleman with eyeglasses who sat alone
at the adjoining table.

"Hullo--Buttles!" Lansing exclaimed, recognising with surprise the
recalcitrant secretary who had resisted Miss Hicks's endeavour to
convert him to Tiepolo.

Mr. Buttles, blushing to the roots of his scant hair, half rose and
bowed ceremoniously.

Nick Lansing's first feeling was of annoyance at being disturbed in his
solitary broodings; his next, of relief at having to postpone them even
to converse with Mr. Buttles.

"No idea you were here: is the yacht in harbour?" he asked, remembering
that the Ibis must be just about to spread her wings.

Mr. Buttles, at salute behind his chair, signed a mute negation: for the
moment he seemed too embarrassed to speak.

"Ah--you're here as an advance guard? I remember now--I saw Miss Hicks
in Venice the day before yesterday," Lansing continued, dazed at the
thought tha