ddressing him by
name. Meats turned round with a start.

"Don't you remember me?" asked Michael.

"Of course I do," said Meats nervously. "But for the love of Jerusalem
drop calling me by that name. Here, let's go outside."

In the street Michael asked him why he had given up being Meats.

"Oh, a bit of trouble, a bit of trouble," said Meats.

"You are a strange chap," said Michael. "When I first met you it was
Brother Aloysius. Then it was Meats. Now----"

"Look here," said Meats, "give over, will you? I've told you once. If
you call me that again I shall leave you. Barnes is what I am now. Now
don't forget."

"Come and have a drink, and tell me what you've been doing in the four
years since we met," Michael suggested.

"B-a-r-n-e-s. Have you got it?"

Michael assured him that everything but Barnes as applicable to him had
vanished from his mind.

"Come on, then," said Barnes. "We'll go into the Afrique, upstairs."

Michael fancied he had met Barnes this time in a reincarnation that was
causing him a good deal of uneasiness. He had lost the knowingness which
had belonged to Meats and the sheer lasciviousness which had seemed the
predominant quality of Brother Aloysius. Instead, sitting at the round
marble table opposite Michael saw an individual who resembled an actor
out of work in the lowest grades of his profession. There was the cheesy
complexion, and the over-fashioned suit of another season too much worn
and faded now to flaunt itself objectionably, but with its dismoded
exaggerations still conveying an air of rococo smartness; perhaps,
thought Michael, these signs had always been obvious and it had merely
been his own youth which had supposed a type to be an exception.
Certainly Barnes could not arouse now anything but a compassionate
amusement. How this figure with its grotesque indignity as of a puppet
temporarily put out of action testified to his own morbid heightening of
common things in the past. How incredible it seemed now that this Barnes
had once been able to work upon his soul with influential doctrine.

"What have you been doing with yourself?" Michael asked again.

"Oh, hopping and popping about. I've got the rats at present."

"Where are you living?"

Barnes looked at Michael in suspicious astonishment. "What do you want
to know for?" he asked.

"Mere inquisitiveness," Michael assured him. "You really needn't treat
me like a detective, you know."

"My mistake," said Barnes. "Bu