“Eh?” he said.  “I say, Romarin, don’t let’s go grave-digging among memories merely for the sake of making conversation.  Yours may be pleasant, but I’m not in the habit of wasting much time over mine.  Might as well be making new ones ...  I’ll drink whiskey and soda.”

It was brought, a large one; and Marsden, nodding, took a deep gulp.

“Health,” he said.

“Thanks,” said Romarin—­instantly noting that the monosyllable, which matched the other’s in curtness, was not at all the reply he had intended.  “Thank you—­yours,” he amended; and a short pause followed, in which fish was brought.

This was not what Romarin had hoped for.  He had desired to be reconciled with Marsden, not merely to be allowed to pay for his dinner.  Yet if Marsden did not wish to talk it was difficult not to defer to his wish.  It was true that he had asked if Marsden was still a Romanticist largely for the sake of something to say; but Marsden’s prompt pointing out of this was not encouraging.  Now that he came to think of it, he had never known precisely what Marsden had meant by the word “Romance” he had so frequently taken into his mouth; he only knew that this creed of Romanticism, whatever it was, had been worn rather challengingly, a chip on the shoulder, to be knocked off at some peril or other.  And it had seemed to Romarin a little futile in the violence with which it had been maintained ...  But that was neither here nor there.  The point was, that the conversation had begun not very happily, and must be mended at once if at all.  To mend it, Romarin leaned across the table.

“Be as friendly as I am, Marsden,” he said.  “I think—­pardon me—­that if our positions were reversed, and I saw in you the sincere desire to help that I have, I’d take it in the right way.”  Again Marsden looked suspiciously at him.  “To help?  How to help?” he demanded “That’s what I should like you to tell me.  But I suppose (for example) you still work?”

“Oh, my work!” Marsden made a little gesture of contempt.  “Try again, Romarin.”

“You don’t do any?...  Come, I’m no bad friend to my friends, and you’ll find me—­especially so.”

But Marsden put up his hand.

“Not quite so quickly,” he said.  “Let’s see what you mean by help first.  Do you really mean that you want me to borrow money from you?  That’s help as I understand it nowadays.”

“Then you’ve changed,” said Romarin—­wondering, however, in his secret heart whether Marsden had changed very much in that respect after all.

Marsden gave a short honk of a laugh.

“You didn’t suppose I hadn’t changed, did you?” Then he leaned suddenly forward.  “This is rather a mistake, Romarin—­rather a mistake,” he said.

“What is?”

“This—­our meeting again.  Quite a mistake.”

Romarin sighed.  “I had hoped not,” he said.

Marsden leaned forward again, with another gesture Romarin remembered very well—­dinner knife in hand, edge and palm upwards, punctuating and expounding with the point.