Lance would have been like his father, to his friend’s sense, had he had less humour, and like his mother had he had more beauty.  Yet it was a good middle way for Peter that, in the modern manner, he was, to the eye, rather the young stock-broker than the young artist.  The youth reasoned that it was a question of time—­there was such a mill to go through, such an awful lot to learn.  He had talked with fellows and had judged.  ‘One has got, today,’ he said, ’don’t you see? to know.’

His interlocutor, at this, gave a groan.  ‘Oh hang it, don’t know!’

Lance wondered. ‘"Don’t”?  Then what’s the use—?’

‘The use of what?’

‘Why of anything.  Don’t you think I’ve talent?’

Peter smoked away for a little in silence; then went on:  ’It isn’t knowledge, it’s ignorance that—­as we’ve been beautifully told—­is bliss.’

‘Don’t you think I’ve talent?’ Lance repeated.

Peter, with his trick of queer kind demonstrations, passed his arm round his godson and held him a moment.  ‘How do I know?’

‘Oh,’ said the boy, ‘if it’s your own ignorance you’re defending—!’

Again, for a pause, on the sofa, his godfather smoked.  ’It isn’t.  I’ve the misfortune to be omniscient.’

‘Oh well,’ Lance laughed again, ‘if you know too much—!’

‘That’s what I do, and it’s why I’m so wretched.’

Lance’s gaiety grew.  ‘Wretched?  Come, I say!’

‘But I forgot,’ his companion went on—­’you’re not to know about that.  It would indeed for you too make the too much.  Only I’ll tell you what I’ll do.’  And Peter got up from the sofa.  ’If you’ll go up again I’ll pay your way at Cambridge.’

Lance stared, a little rueful in spite of being still more amused.  ’Oh Peter!  You disapprove so of Paris?’

‘Well, I’m afraid of it.’

‘Ah I see!’

’No, you don’t see—­yet.  But you will—­that is you would.  And you mustn’t.’

The young man thought more gravely.  ‘But one’s innocence, already—!’

‘Is considerably damaged?  Ah that won’t matter,’ Peter persisted—­’we’ll patch it up here.’

‘Here?  Then you want me to stay at home?’

Peter almost confessed to it.  ’Well, we’re so right—­we four together—­just as we are.  We’re so safe.  Come, don’t spoil it.’

The boy, who had turned to gravity, turned from this, on the real pressure of his friend’s tone, to consternation.  ’Then what’s a fellow to be?’

’My particular care.  Come, old man’—­and Peter now fairly pleaded—­’I’ll look out for you.’

Lance, who had remained on the sofa with his legs out and his hands in his pockets, watched him with eyes that showed suspicion.  Then he got up.  ’You think there’s something the matter with me—­that I can’t make a success.’

‘Well, what do you call a success?’

Lance thought again.  ’Why the best sort, I suppose, is to please one’s self.  Isn’t that the sort that, in spite of cabals and things, is—­in his own peculiar line—­the Master’s?’