ed the Frenchman, looking up from his game
of dominoes, "I would not stop in London if I could help it."

"Oh, shut up, Copal!" said Lightmark good-humouredly. "I was with
ladies--Dupuis will sympathize with me there, eh, _mon vieux_?--and
they wanted to stay at Lucerne until the last minute. So we came
straight through."

"Then you haven't seen Sarah in 'Cleopatra,' and we were relying on
you for an unvarnished account. Ladies, too! See here, my boy, you
won't get any good out of touring about the Continent with ladies.
Hang it all! I believe it'll come true, after all?"

"Very likely--what?"

"Oh, well, they said--I didn't believe it, but they said that you
were going to desert the camp, and prance about with corpulent
R.A.'s in Hanover Square."

"And so would we all, if we got the chance," said McAllister
cynically.

And after the general outcry which followed this suggestion, the
conversation drifted back to the old discussion of the autumn shows,
the pastels at the Grosvenor, and the most recent additions to the
National Gallery.

When at last Rainham came into the room, following, with his
habitual half-timid air, the shambling figure of the painter Oswyn,
it struck Lightmark that he had grown older, and that he had, as it
were, assimilated some of the intimate disreputability of the place:
it would no longer have been possible to single him out as a foreign
unit in the circle, or to detect in his mental attitude any of the
curiosity of the casual seeker after new impressions, the Philistine
in Bohemia. There was nothing but pleasure in the slight
manifestation of surprise which preceded his frank greeting of
Lightmark, a greeting thoroughly English in its matter-of-fact want
of demonstrativeness, and the avoidance of anything likely to
attract the attention of others.

Oswyn seemed less at his ease; there was an extra dash of nervous
brusqueness in the sarcastic welcome which he offered to the
new-comer; and although there was a vacant seat in the little
circle, of which Copal and Lightmark formed the nucleus, and to
which Rainham had joined himself, he shuffled off to his favourite
corner, and buried himself in "Gil Blas" and an abnormally thick
cloud of tobacco-smoke.

Rainham gazed after him for a moment or two with a puzzled
expression.

"Amiable as ever!" said Lightmark, with a laugh. "Poor old beggar!
Have a cigarette? You ought to give up pipes. Haven't you been told
that cigarettes are--wh