So they became friends.  Sypher, since the blistered heel episode, had lost his fearless way of trumpeting the Cure far and wide, having a nervous dread of seeing the p and q of the hateful words form themselves on the lips of a companion.  He became subdued, and spoke only of travel and men and things, of anything but the Cure.  He preferred to listen and, as Rattenden preferred to talk, he found conversation a simple matter.  Rattenden was an amusing anecdotist and had amassed a prodigious amount of raw material for his craft.  To the collector, by some unknown law of attraction, come the objects which he collects.  Everywhere he goes he finds them to his hand, as Septimus’s friend found the Toby jugs.  Wherever Rattenden turned, a bit of gossip met his ear.  Very few things, therefore, happened in literary and theatrical London which did not come inevitably to his knowledge.  He could have wrecked many homes and pricked many reputations.  As a man of the world, however, he used his knowledge with discretion, and as an artist in anecdote he selected fastidiously.  He seldom retailed a bit of gossip for its own sake; when he did so he had a purpose.

One evening they dined together at Sypher’s club, a great semi-political institution with many thousand members.  He had secured, however, a quiet table in a corner of the dining-room which was adorned with full-length portraits of self-conscious statesmen.  Sypher unfolded his napkin with an air of satisfaction.

“I’ve had good news to-day.  Mrs. Middlemist is on her way home.”

“You have the privilege of her friendship,” said Rattenden.  “You’re to be envied. O fortunate nimium.”

He preserved some of the Oxford tradition in tone and manner.  He had brown hair turning gray, a drooping mustache and wore pince-nez secured by a broad black cord.  Being very short-sighted his eyes seen through the thick lenses were almost expressionless.

“Zora Middlemist,” said he, squeezing lemon over his oysters, “is a grand and splendid creature whom I admire vastly.  As I never lose an opportunity of telling her that she is doing nothing with her grand and splendid qualities, I suffer under the ban of her displeasure.”

“What do you think she ought to do with them?” asked Sypher.

“It’s a difficult and delicate matter to discuss a woman with another man; especially—­” he waved a significant hand.  “But I, in my little way, have written a novel or two—­studies of women.  I speak therefore as an expert.  Now, just as a painter can’t correctly draw the draped figure unless he has an anatomical knowledge of the limbs beneath, so is a novelist unable to present the character of a woman with sincerity and verisimilitude unless he has taken into account all the hidden physiological workings of that woman’s nature.  He must be familiar with the workings of the sex principle within her, although he need not show them in his work,