Rickman held himself in with difficulty.  When pearls are cast before swine you look for depreciation as a matter of course; you would be infinitely more revolted if, instead of trampling them under their feet, the animals insisted on wearing them in their snouts.  So Pilkington rootling in Miss Harden’s affairs; Pilkington posing as Miss Harden’s adviser; Pilkington adorning his obscene conversation with Miss Harden’s name, was to Rickman an infinitely more abominable beast than Pilkington behaving according to his nature.  But to quarrel with Pilkington on this head would have provoked the vulgarest of comments, and for Miss Harden’s sake he restrained himself.

Dicky remained unconscious.  “I’m glad you put me up to offering some of those books back.  It goes against me to sell them, but what the devil am I to do?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“I shan’t collar all this furniture, either.  I’ll buy in some of it and return it.  The decent thing would be to give her back poor Freddy’s portrait.”

He passed his hand over a bunch of bananas,—­he selected one, pinched it, smelt it, put it down and took another.

“It’s a pity it’s a Watts, that portrait,” he murmured dreamily.  He seemed to be wrestling with himself; and apparently he overcame.  When he had eaten his banana his face was flushed and almost firm.

“I’ll not take it.  He sticks in my throat, does Freddy.”

Rickman left the table.  If he had disliked Dicky when he was callous, he loathed him when he was kind.

He threw open the window, and sat on the ledge.  The breeze had died down and the heat in the little hotel was stifling.  Across the passage glasses clinked in the bar, sounding a suitable accompaniment to the voice of Dicky.  From time to time bursts of laughter came from the billiard-room overhead.  Outside there, in the night, the sea smothered these jarring human notes with its own majestic tumult.  Rickman, giving up his sickened senses to the night and the sea, was fortunate enough to miss a great deal that Pilkington was saying.

For Dicky, still seated at the table, talked on.  He had mingled soda with whisky, and as he drank it, the veil of our earthly life lifted for Dicky, and there was revealed to him the underlying verity, the fabric of the world.  In other words, Dicky had arrived at the inspired moment of the evening, and was chanting the Hymn of Finance.

“Look,” said Dicky, “at the Power it gives you.  Now all you writing chaps, you know, you’re not in it, you’re not in it at all.  You’re simply ’opping and dodging round the outside—­you ’aven’t a chance of really seeing the show.  Whereas—­look at me.  I go and take my seat plump down in the middle of the stage box.  I’ve got my ear to the heart of ’Umanity and my ’and on its pulse.  I’ve got a grip of realities.  You say you want to por-tray life.  Very well, por-tray it.  When all’s said and done you’ve