Foe cut him short here. "My only trouble with you, Farrell," said he, "is that you may reach your grave without understanding. If I thought that wasn't preventible somehow, it would save me trouble to wring your neck here and now and throw you overboard. As it is--" But, as it was, along the deck just then came Constantia Denistoun, with her mother leaning on her arm and a maid following. She recognised Foe and halted. "Why, good Heavens! . . . and I'd no idea that you were on the _Emania_," said she. "Mother, this is Mr. Foe--Roddy's friend, you know. . . . Or ought I to call you Doctor, or Professor, or what? . . . You weren't anything of that sort anyhow, when we met-- how many years ago? at Cambridge." --That, or to that effect. . . . Constantia told me afterwards that she didn't remember throwing more than a glance at Farrell, whom she took, very pardonably, to be a chance acquaintance from the smoking-room, picked up as such acquaintances are picked up on ship-board. And Farrell stood back a couple of paces. To do him justice, he was in no wise a thruster. "It's odd," she went on, "that we haven't run across one another until this moment. What's your business, over yonder? if that's not a rude question." "It's a natural one, anyhow," Foe answered. "My business? Well, it has been suggested to me that a trip in the States, to see what they're doing in the way of scientific outfit and, maybe, get hints for a new laboratory, might not be waste of time." "Yes, I know; I've heard," she said softly. "It's splendid to find you taking it like this . . . picking up the pieces, eh? . . . I wonder if"--she hesitated--"if I might ask you some questions? . . . Just as much as you choose to tell: but something to put into a letter to our Roddy, you know. Any news of you will be honey to him. . . . You'll be writing from New York, of course. But one man doesn't tell another that he's looking brave and well; and yet that's often what the other may be most wanting to know." Foe was touched (so he's told me). He said some ordinary thing that tried to show he was grateful, and Constantia and her mother passed on. He had not introduced Farrell. Constantia told me most of the rest, some months later, pouring tea for me in her flat. There is not much in it. She said that she had taken very little account of Jack's companion; had just reckoned him up for a chance idler in his company--"a sort of super-commercial traveller"; so she described him; "not at all bad-looking though." She went on to tell that she had been mildly surprised to see them at dinner, seated together; further surprised and even intrigued, to see them at breakfast together, next morning.