In general, my words may have been without effect; but they had at least one result I had not anticipated. For when, a few moments later, Gavison announced that nominations were in order for Vice-President, I was surprised to find that my name was the first put forward, and that no others were put forward at all--so that I was selected without opposition. After I had duly thanked my fellow club members for this honor, the President turned to me, and said, “Harkness, I appoint you a committee of one to confer with me in drawing up the constitution of the Upper World Club.” And with that the meeting adjourned. And thus began my intimacy with Captain Gavison. I do not know how seriously he took the Upper World Club and its constitution, for at most times his grim, firm face was inscrutable; but he acted as if he took it seriously indeed, and he and I spent hours together debating and planning for the club, almost as though we had had to draw up a pact not for thirty-nine individuals but for thirty-nine sovereign states. How much the club profited from our activities shall always be a question in my mind; but I am certain that I personally profited a great deal, and make bold to believe that even Gavison was not without benefit. Although he had a habit of shutting his thin lips stoically and glaring upon the world with stern, impassive air, an occasional look of weariness and even of melancholy in his keen gray eyes told me that he too was suffering from loneliness; and while he would have been the last man in the world to make such an admission openly, he made it tacitly by the amount of time he spent in my company, theoretically drawing up the constitution of the Upper World Club. He was always far from loquacious; frequently he was taciturn indeed, and would simply sit before me with a detached and meditative air, occasionally grunting some comment or question in response to my remarks. Perhaps the consciousness of the former gulf between us would not leave him; but all the while I felt that we were drawing together, were even beginning to look upon one another with a genuine, although undemonstrative regard. Certainly, he was emerging by degrees from the thick shell of his reticence, as I was emerging from mine. We began quite naturally by a discussion of Atlantis and the Atlanteans; and gradually we ventured into more personal subjects. There came a day when I went so far as to tell him of my former life, my training in ancient Greek, my betrothal to Alma Huntley; and, responsive to my confidence, he offered me one or two glimpses into his own past, and made himself appear more human than ever before, by stating that he had a wife and two little daughters in New York, who no doubt were even now mourning him as lost.