ow of
five-and-thirty, with long pale hair and a white face; he had the look of
a man who lived too little in the open air. He wore a hat like a
dissenting minister's. Philip disliked him for his patronising manner and
was bored by his fluent conversation. Leonard Upjohn liked to hear himself
talk. He was not sensitive to the interest of his listeners, which is the
first requisite of the good talker; and he never realised that he was
telling people what they knew already. With measured words he told Philip
what to think of Rodin, Albert Samain, and Caesar Franck. Philip's
charwoman only came in for an hour in the morning, and since Philip was
obliged to be at the hospital all day Cronshaw was left much alone. Upjohn
told Philip that he thought someone should remain with him, but did not
offer to make it possible.

"It's dreadful to think of that great poet alone. Why, he might die
without a soul at hand."

"I think he very probably will," said Philip.

"How can you be so callous!"

"Why don't you come and do your work here every day, and then you'd be
near if he wanted anything?" asked Philip drily.

"I? My dear fellow, I can only work in the surroundings I'm used to, and
besides I go out so much."

Upjohn was also a little put out because Philip had brought Cronshaw to
his own rooms.

"I wish you had left him in Soho," he said, with a wave of his long, thin
hands. "There was a touch of romance in that sordid attic. I could even
bear it if it were Wapping or Shoreditch, but the respectability of
Kennington! What a place for a poet to die!"

Cronshaw was often so ill-humoured that Philip could only keep his temper
by remembering all the time that this irritability was a symptom of the
disease. Upjohn came sometimes before Philip was in, and then Cronshaw
would complain of him bitterly. Upjohn listened with complacency.

"The fact is that Carey has no sense of beauty," he smiled. "He has a
middle-class mind."

He was very sarcastic to Philip, and Philip exercised a good deal of
self-control in his dealings with him. But one evening he could not
contain himself. He had had a hard day at the hospital and was tired out.
Leonard Upjohn came to him, while he was making himself a cup of tea in
the kitchen, and said that Cronshaw was complaining of Philip's insistence
that he should have a doctor.

"Don't you realise that you're enjoying a very rare, a very exquisite
privilege? You ought to do everything in your po