But he was lonely and desolate. The women whom he loved never loved him, and indeed he never came sufficiently close to them to give them any encouragement. He dreamt about them and painted them as they certainly were not. He had his passions and his desires, but his Puritan descent kept him always at one remove from experience. He never, in fact, seemed to have contact with anything at all--except Baker in Oregon, his two sisters, and his forty etchings. He was so shy that he was thought to be conceited, so idealistic that he was considered cynical, so chaste that he was considered a most immoral fellow with a secret double life. Like the hero of "Flegeljahre," he "loved every dog and wanted every dog to love him," but the dogs did not know enough about him to be interested; he was so like so many other immaculately-dressed, pleasant-mannered, and wandering American cosmopolitans that nobody had any permanent feeling for him--fathered by Henry James, uncled by Howells, aunted (severely) by Edith Wharton--one of a million cultured, kindly impersonal Americans seen as shadows by the matter-of-fact unimaginative British. Who knew or cared that he was lonely, longing for love, for home, for some one to whom he might give his romantic devotion? He was all these things, but no one minded. And then he met James Maradick. 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.