king's horses and all the king's men could never bring them again
together; and over some utterly unimportant matter like the first view
of Stockholm.

"Youth has many privileges over age," continued Hardiman, "but none
greater than the vision, the half-interpreted recurring vision of wider
spaces and greater things, towards which you sail on the wind of a great
emotion. Sooner or later, a man loses that vision and then only knows
his loss. Stay here, and you'll lose it before your time."

Luttrell looked curiously at his companion, wondering what manner of man
he had been in his twenties. Hardiman answered the look with a laugh.
"Oh, I, too, had my ambitions once."

Luttrell folded the cablegram which Hardiman had written out and placed
it in the breast pocket of his dinner-jacket.

"I will talk to Stella to-night at dinner. Then, if I decide to send it,
I can send it from the hotel over there at the landing-steps before we
return to the yacht."

Sir Charles Hardiman rose cumbrously with a shrug of his shoulders. He
had done his best, but since Luttrell would talk the question over with
Stella Croyle, shoulder to shoulder with her amongst the lights and
music, the perfume of her hair in his nostrils and the pleading of her
eyes within his sight--he, Charles Hardiman, might as well have held his
tongue.

So very likely it would have been. But when great matters are ripe for
decisions one way or the other, the little accident as often as not