quite easy, in satisfying the appetite of journalists for copious personal details, especially after the hints dropped by Mr. Fink, to keep them carefully off the subject of his immediate past.  There had been many others in the world who, on attaining fame, had preferred to gloss over their earlier history.  It seemed to be tacitly understood amongst this wonderful freemasonry of newspaper men that Mr. Merton Ware was to be humoured in this way.  He was a man of the present.  Character sketches of him were to be all foreground.  But, nevertheless, Philip had his trials.

“Want to introduce you to one of our chief ‘movie’ men,” Noel Bridges said to him one day in the smoking room of “The Lambs.”  “He is much interested in the play, too.  Mr. Raymond Greene, shake hands with Mr. Merton Ware.”

Mr. Raymond Greene, smiling and urbane, turned around with outstretched hand, which Philip, courteous, and with all that charm of manner which was making him speedily one of the most popular young men in New York, grasped cordially.

“I am very happy to meet you, Mr. Greene,” he said.  “You represent an amazing development.  I am told that we shall all have to work for you presently or find our occupation gone.”

With a cool calculation which had come to Philip in these days of his greater strength, he had purposely extended his sentence, conscious, although apparently he ignored the fact, that all the time Mr. Raymond Greene was staring in his face with a bewilderment which was not without its humorous side.  He was too much a man of the world, this great picture producer, to be at a loss for words, to receive an introduction with any degree of clumsiness.

“But surely,” he almost stammered, “we have met before?”

Philip shook his head doubtfully.

“I don’t think so,” he said, “As a matter of fact, I am sure we haven’t, because you are one of the men whom I hoped some day to come across over here.  I couldn’t possibly have forgotten a meeting with you.”

Mr. Raymond Greene’s blue eyes looked as though they saw visions.

“But surely,” he expostulated, “the Elletania—­my table on the Elletania, when Miss Dalstan crossed—­”

Philip laughed easily.

“Why,” he exclaimed, “are you going to be like the others and take me for—­wasn’t it Mr. Romilly?—­the man who disappeared from the Waldorf?  Why, I’ve been tracked all round New York because of my likeness to that man.”

“Likeness!” Mr. Raymond Greene muttered.  “Likeness!”

There was a moment’s silence.  Then Mr. Greene knew that the time had arrived for him to pull himself together.  He had carried his bewilderment to the very limits of good breeding.

“Well, well!” he continued.  “Fortunately, it’s six o’clock, and I can offer you gentlemen a cocktail, for upon my word I need it!  Come to look at you, Mr. Ware, there’s a trifle more what I might term savoir faire, about you.  That chap on the boat was a little crude in places, but believe me, sir,” he went on, thrusting his arm through Ware’s and leading him towards the bar, “you don’t want to be annoyed at those people who have mistaken you for Romilly, for in the whole course of my life, and I’ve travelled round the world a pretty good deal, I never came across a likeness so entirely extraordinary.”