“I should have done so a couple of days ago, if it had not been for you. You seem to have a sort of way of pushing the lonesomeness off people's shoulders.” There was an ingenuous frankness, an artless simplicity in the man's tone, that touched a soft spot in Raine's nature. “That's devilish good of you,” he replied, with an Englishman's awkwardness of acknowledgment. “You have done me a good turn too. Come along.” In spite of Hockmaster's special efforts towards entertainment, the drive to Cluses was particularly dreary. The rain never ceased falling, the damp hung thick upon leaves and branches, and clustered like wool among the pine stems. The mountains loomed vague and indistinct, fading away into mist in the middle-distance. The Arve, as the road approached it, seethed below, a muddy torrent. The desolate district beyond St. Martin heaved like an Aceldama of mud and detritus oozing through the fog. Besides external depression, certain anxieties lay on Raine's mind. His father's health was never very strong. A dangerous illness was to be dreaded. His deep affection for his father magnified his fears. There was Katherine, too. His heart yearned towards her. He closed his eyes to the hopeless landscape, and evoked her picture as she stood in pale saffron and sapphire and a dash of pale gold, the morning's colours, in the morning sunlight. But why had she left him so long without news of her? A lover's question, which he sought to answer lover-wise. Cluses at last, the little watchmakers' town; an hour's wait for the train. They went into a _café_ and sat down. After a while Hockmaster rose, went up to an old plate-glass mirror on one side of the room, smoothed his thin sandy hair with his fingers, arranged his cravat, and then returned. With the exception of two elderly townsmen playing at dominoes in the corner, while the host sat looking on in his shirtsleeves, they were the only customers. They conversed in desultory fashion on the rain, the journey, the forlorn aspect of the place. “If we had a town with an industry like this one in America,” said Hockmaster, after his second _petit verre_ from the carafe in front of him, “we should hitch it on to Wall Street and make a go-ahead city of it in a fortnight, and manufacture timepieces for half the universe.” “That would be rather rough on the universe,” said Raine idly. “American watches--” “The very tip-topest articles in the world!” interrupted Hockmaster warmly. “Just look at this!” He drew from his pocket a magnificent gold watch, opened all its cases rapidly, and displayed the works before Raine's eyes. “There! See whether that can be beaten in Europe. Made, every bit of it, in Chicago. That watch cost me 450 dollars. It did that.” Raine admired the watch, mollified the owner, who drank another glass of _fine champagne_ on the strength of his country's reputation. Then with an inconsequence that was one of the quaint features of his conversation: