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 decides.