ransport myself
and him to California. And he knew this--the rogue!

Finally, as the soft silvery twilight encompassed us, he told what I
wanted to know.

"My father was a manufacturer who married a Frenchwoman. My brothers
have trodden carefully and securely in my father's footsteps. They are
all fairly prosperous--smug, respectable fellows. I resemble my
mother. After Eton and Christ Church I was pitchforked into the family
business. For a time it absorbed my attention. I will tell you why
later. Then, having mastered the really interesting part of it, I grew
bored. I wanted to study art. After several scenes with my father, I
was allowed to go my own way--a pleasant way, too, but it led
downhill, you understand. I spent three winters in Venice. Then my
father died, and I came into a small fortune, which I squandered. My
mother helped me; then she died. My brothers cut me, condemning me as
a Bohemian and a vagabond. I confess that I did take a malicious
pleasure in rubbing their sleek fur the wrong way. Then I crossed the
Atlantic as the guest of an American millionaire. He took me on in his
own car to California. I started a studio in San Francisco--and a life
class. That undid me, I found myself bankrupt. Then I fell desperately
ill. Each day I felt the quicksands engulfing me."

"But your friends?" I interrupted.

"My friends? Yes, I had friends; but perhaps you will understand me,
having seen to what depths I fell, that I couldn't bring myself to
apply to my friends. Well, I was at my last gasp when I crawled up to
your barn. I mean morally, for my strength was returning. You and your
brother rode up. By God! I could have killed you!"

"Killed us?"

"You looked so fit, so prosperous, and I could read you both, could
see in flaming capitals your pity, your contempt,--aye, and your
disgust that a fellow-Englishman should be festering before your eyes.
I asked for leave to spend the night in your barn, and you said, 'All
right.' All right, when everything was so cruelly, so pitilessly the
other way! Then you came back, taking for granted that I must accept
whatever you offered. I wanted to refuse, but the words stuck in my
throat. I followed you to the bath-house. Was I grateful? Not a bit. I
decided that for your own amusement, and perhaps to staunch your
English pride, which I had offended, you meant to lift a poor devil
out of hell, so as to drop him again into deeper depths when the
comedy was over----"