V

 The meeting was of the simplest. At the Reform Club one day he was lunching with two men, one a novelist, Westcott, whom he knew very slightly, the other a fellow American. Westcott, a dark thick-set man of about forty, with a reputation that without being sensational was solid and well merited, said very little. Harkness liked him and recognised in him a kindly shyness rather like his own. After luncheon they moved into the big smoking-room upstairs to drink their coffee. 

 A large, handsome man of between fifty and sixty came up and spoke to Westcott. He was obviously pleased to see him, putting his hand on his shoulder, looking at him with kindly, smiling eyes. Westcott also flushed with pleasure. The big man sat down with them and Harkness was introduced to him. His name was Maradick—Sir James Maradick. A strange, unreal kind of name for so real and solid a man. As he sat forward on the sofa with his heavy shoulders, his deep chest, his thick neck, red-brown colour, and clear open gaze, he seemed to Harkness to be the typical rather naïve friendly but cautious British man of business. 

 That impression soon passed. There was something in Maradick that almost instantly warmed his heart. He responded—as do all American men—immediately, even emotionally, to any friendly contact. The reserves that were in his nature were from his superficial cosmopolitanism; the native warm-hearted, eager and trusting Americanism was as real and active as it ever had been. It was, in five minutes, as though he had known this large kindly man always. His shyness dropped from him. He was talking eagerly and with great happiness. 

 Maradick did not patronise, did not check that American spontaneity with traditional caution as so many Englishmen do; he seemed to like Harkness as truly as Harkness liked him. 

 Westcott had to go. The other American also departed, but Maradick and Harkness sat on there, amused, and even absorbed. 

 "If I am keeping you——" Harkness said suddenly, some of his shyness for a moment returning. 

 "Not at all," Maradick answered. "I have nothing urgent this afternoon. I've got the very place for you, I believe." 

 They had been speaking of places. Maradick had travelled, and together they found some of the smaller places that they both knew and loved—Dragör on the sea beyond Copenhagen, the woods north of Helsingfors, the beaches of Ischia, the 

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