k, this perpetual wear of heart and brain,
how it sapped life at the very foundation!

To be "safe!" To be solidly established! The import and significance of
the conception sank deep into him. Sadler was an older man, had gone
through all these phases. "Safety!" No wonder his friend would not
hesitate to barter romance for all that the magic word doubtless meant
to him.

IX

It was this keynote of "safety" that sounded more in his mind, this
appreciation of the stability and comfort of the house at the corner
that grew upon him as his visits to the Robinsons continued; for it
naturally came to be the settled thing that he should dine with the
Robinsons on most of the evenings that he was not engaged elsewhere or
otherwise. The argument at first had been the same simple one that he
might as well join them as dine alone, and there seemed no reason for
refusing their excellent fare and their admiring society. On the other
hand, as his ever-insistent pride demanded that they should not suppose
he was cut off from his own world; and as, too, he felt subtly required
to live up to the social role which he fancied they as yet attributed to
him, he was thus stimulated to pick up again some of the old threads of
his existence. He called on remote aunts in Eaton Square; on retired
military uncles in South Kensington. And as the winter advanced he began
to find a pleasure in renewing old acquaintanceships, enjoying
everybody's surprise at his turning up again, smiling and prosperous.
It almost amounted to a self-vindication, and he chuckled in secret,
imagining to himself their confusion.

And since he _was_ emerging from his retirement, there seemed no longer
any reason why he should not mix again in the art world, and Sadler, who
had come up to his studio on one or two occasions, induced him to show
himself at some of the clubs. At the same time he began to cultivate
again some of the smaller coteries of which he had once been so popular
a light. Other men, too, began to look him up, and, best of all, an
editor one day sent him an unhoped-for commission--half-a-dozen drawings
for a magazine story by a widely-read author.

On the whole he was well satisfied to get back into the world. It
raised, or rather confirmed, him in his own esteem, and saved him--as he
put it--from attaching too cheap a price to himself. He was thus able to
meet the Robinsons from a real plane of vantage, and to purge his mind
of that slight