“The good lady’s one of those women who speak as if they had a relation who had married a high official in the Kingdom of Heaven and now and then gave them confidential information.”

Sypher liked Rattenden because he could often put into a phrase his own unformulated ideas.  He also belonged to a world to which he himself was a stranger, the world of books and plays and personalities and theories of art.  Sypher thought that its denizens lived on a lofty plane.

“The atmosphere,” said Rattenden, “is so rarified that the kettle refuses to boil properly.  That is why we always have cold tea at literary gatherings.  My dear fellow, it’s a damned world.  It talks all day and does nothing all night.  The ragged Italian in front of the fresco in his village church or at the back of the gallery at the opera of his town knows more essentials of painting and music than any of us.  It’s a hollow sham of a world filled with empty words.  I love it.”

“Then why abuse it?” laughed Sypher.

“Because it’s a wanton and the wanton angers you and fascinates you at the same time.  You never know how to take her.  You are aware she hasn’t got a heart, but her lips are red.  She is unreal.  She holds views in defiance of common sense.  Which is the nobler thing to do—­to dig potatoes or paint a man digging potatoes?  She swears to you that the digger is a clod of earth and the painter a handful of heaven.  She is talking rot.  You know it.  Yet you believe her.”

Sypher was not convinced by the airy paradoxician.  He had a childish idea that painters and novelists and actors were superior beings.  Rattenden found this Arcadian and cultivated Sypher’s society.  They took long walks together on Sunday afternoons.

“After all,” said Rattenden, “I can speak freely.  I am a pariah among my kind.”

Sypher asked why.

“Because I don’t play golf.  In London it is impossible to be seriously regarded as a literary man unless you play golf.”

He found Sypher a good listener.  He loved to catch a theory of life, hold it in his hand like a struggling bird while he discoursed about it, and let it go free into the sunshine again.  Sypher admired his nimbleness of mind.

“You juggle with ideas as the fellows on the stage do with gilt balls.”

“It’s a game I learned,” said Rattenden.  “It’s very useful.  It takes one’s mind off the dull question of earning bread and butter for a wife and five children.”

“I wish you’d teach it to me,” said Sypher.  “I’ve many wives and many children dependent on me for bread and butter!”

Rattenden was quick to note the tone of depression.  He laughed kindly.

“Looking on is just as good.  When you’re worried in London why don’t you look me up?  My wife and I will play the game for you.  She’s an amusing body.  Heaven knows how I should have got through without her.  She also swears by Sypher’s Cure.”