“Hullo, Johnson!” I exclaimed.

“Hullo!” said he.

He had recognised me first, and addressed the remark about the picture to me.  Nobody else was near us.  We shook hands solemnly, eyeing each other, noting the changes.  Johnson appeared to be prosperous, but slightly Gallicised.

“How is—­Ajax?” he murmured.

“Ajax has grown fat.  Can’t you dine with me?”

“It’s my turn.  We must order a bottle of Leoville at once.”

“You sent that wine,” I exclaimed.  There was no note of interrogation in my voice.  I knew.

“Yes,” he said indifferently; “it will be worth drinking in about ten years’ time.”

We had an admirable dinner upon a terrace overhanging the Loire, but the measure of my enjoyment was stinted by Johnson’s exasperating reticence concerning himself.  He talked delightfully of the chateaux in Touraine; he displayed an intimate knowledge of French history and archaeology, but I was tingling with impatience to transport 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?”