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How it came about Mr. Korner was never able to fully satisfy himself. Mr. Korner was not the type that serves the purpose of the temperance lecturer. His “first glass” he had drunk more years ago than he could recollect, and since had tasted the varied contents of many others. But never before had Mr. Korner exceeded, nor been tempted to exceed, the limits of his favourite virtue, moderation.

“We had one bottle of claret between us,” Mr. Korner would often recall to his mind, “of which he drank the greater part. And then he brought out the little green flask. He said it was made from pears–that in Peru they kept it specially for Children’s parties. Of course, that may have been his joke; but in any case I cannot see how just one glass–I wonder could I have taken more than one glass while he was talking.” It was a point that worried Mr. Korner.

The “he” who had talked, possibly, to such bad effect was a distant cousin of Mr. Korner’s, one Bill Damon, chief mate of the steamship La Fortuna. Until their chance meeting that afternoon in Leadenhall Street, they had not seen each other since they were boys together. The Fortuna was leaving St. Katherine’s Docks early the next morning bound for South America, and it might be years before they met again. As Mr. Damon pointed out, Fate, by thus throwing them into each other’s arms, clearly intended they should have a cosy dinner together that very evening in the captain’s cabin of the Fortuna.

Mr. Korner, returning to the office, despatched to Ravenscourt Park an express letter, announcing the strange news that he might not be home that evening much before ten, and at half-past six, for the first time since his marriage, directed his steps away from home and Mrs. Korner.

The two friends talked of many things. And later on they spoke of sweethearts and of wives. Mate Damon’s experiences had apparently been wide and varied. They talked–or, rather, the mate talked, and Mr. Korner listened–of the olive-tinted beauties of the Spanish Main, of the dark-eyed passionate creoles, of the blond Junos of the Californian valleys. The mate had theories concerning the care and management of women: theories that, if the mate’s word could be relied upon, had stood the test of studied application. A new world opened out to Mr. Korner; a world where lovely women worshipped with doglike devotion men who, though loving them in return, knew how to be their masters. Mr. Korner, warmed gradually from cold disapproval to bubbling appreciation, sat entranced. Time alone set a limit to the recital of the mate’s adventures. At eleven o’clock the cook reminded them that the captain and the pilot might be aboard at any moment. Mr. Korner, surprised at the lateness of the hour, took a long and tender farewell of his cousin, and found St. Katherine’s Docks one of the most bewildering places out of which he had ever tried to escape. Under a lamp-post in the Minories, it suddenly occurred to Mr. Korner that he was an unappreciated man. Mrs. Korner never said and did the sort of things by means of which the beauties of the Southern Main endeavoured feebly to express their consuming passion for gentlemen superior in no way–as far as he could see–to Mr. Korner himself. Thinking over the sort of things Mrs. Korner did say and did do, tears sprung into Mr. Korner’s eyes. Noticing that a policeman was eyeing him with curiosity, he dashed them aside and hurried on. Pacing the platform of the Mansion House Station, where it is always draughty, the thought of his wrongs returned to him with renewed force. Why was there no trace of doglike devotion about Mrs. Korner? The fault–so he bitterly told himself–the fault was his. “A woman loves her master; it is her instinct,” mused Mr. Korner to himself. “Damme,” thought Mr. Korner, “I don’t believe that half her time she knows I am her master.”