Women cannot understand that part of a man's life which brings him into daily contact with men whom he does not bring home to dinner. One woman does not know another without bringing her in to meals and showing her her new hat. It is merely a matter of custom. Men are in the habit of associating in daily, almost hourly, intercourse with others who are never really their friends and are always held at a distance. It is useless attempting to explain it, for we are merely reprimanded for unfriendliness, stiffness, and stupid pride. Soit! Let it go. Some of us, perhaps, know our own business best. And there are, thank Heaven! amidst a multitude of female doctors, female professors, female wranglers, a few female women left. Jack Meredith knew quite well what he was about when he listened with a favourable ear to Durnovo's scheme. He knew that this man was not a gentleman, but his own position was so assured that he could afford to associate with any one. Here, again, men are safer. A woman is too delicate a social flower to be independent of environments. She takes the tone of her surroundings. It is, one notices, only the ladies who protest that the barmaid married in haste and repented of at leisure can raise herself to her husband's level. The husband's friends keep silence, and perhaps, like the mariner's bird, they meditate all the more. What Meredith proposed to do was to enter into a partnership with Victor Durnovo, and when the purpose of it was accomplished, to let each man go his way. Such partnerships are entered into every day. Men have carried through a brilliant campaign--a world-affecting scheme--side by side, working with one mind and one heart; and when the result has been attained they drop out of each other's lives for ever. They are created so, for a very good purpose, no doubt. But sometimes Providence steps in and turns the little point of contact into the leaven that leaveneth the whole lump. Providence, it seems--or let us call it Fate--was hovering over that lone African river, where two men, sitting in the stern of a native canoe, took it upon themselves to prearrange their lives. A month later Victor Durnovo was in London. He left behind him in Africa Jack Meredith, whose capacities for organisation were developing very quickly. There was plenty of work for each to do. In Africa Meredith had undertaken to get together men and boats, while Durnovo went home to Europe for a threefold purpose. Firstly, a visit to Europe was absolutely necessary for his health, shattered as it was by too long a sojourn in the fever-ridden river beds of the West Coast. Secondly, there were rifles, ammunition, and stores to be purchased and packed in suitable cases. And, lastly, he was to find and enlist the third man, “the soldierly fellow full of fight,” who knew the natives and the country.