Their carriage seemed to be continually turning. His mind made a picture of a corkscrew with a gnat-sized train twisting industriously. He looked at his watch.

“Good Lord,” he said. “It’s ten past two. I shall stay awake. It’s a mistake to sleep in these chairs.”

“Ten past two,” said Hambledon. “The time for indiscreet conversation. Are you sure you do not want to go to sleep?”

“Quite sure. What were we speaking of before I dozed off. Miss Dacres?”

“Yes. You asked about her marriage. It is difficult even to guess why she married Alfred Meyer. Not because he is the big noise in Incorporated Playhouses. Carolyn had no need of that sort of pull. She had arrived. Perhaps she married him because he was so essentially commonplace. As a kind of set-off to her own temperament. She has the true artistic temperament.”

The tall man winced. Hambledon had made use of a phrase that he detested.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Hambledon continued very earnestly. “Alf is a good fellow. He’s very much liked in the business. But — well, he has never been a romantic figure. He lives for the firm, you know. He and George Mason built it between them. I’ve played in I.P. productions for twelve years now. Eight pieces in all and in five of them I’ve played opposite Carolyn.”

He had the actor’s habit of giving full dramatic value to everything he said. His beautiful voice, with its practised inflexions, suggested a romantic attachment.

“She’s rather a wonderful person,” he said.

“He means that,” thought his companion. “He is in love with her.”

His mind went back to the long journey in the ship with Carolyn Dacres very much the star turn, but not, he had to admit, aggressively the great actress. She and her pale, plump, rather common, rather uninteresting husband, had sat in deck chairs, he with a portable typewriter on his knees and she with a book.