“But you told me you were going back to your dad, because you found you had mistaken your vocation.”

“Gospel truth also!  My Heavens, shall I ever forget the blank horror that grew upon me when I came to understand that music was a science more barbarous than the mathematics that floored me at school, that the life of a musical student, instead of being a delicious whirl of waltz tunes, was ‘one dem’d grind,’ that seemed to grind out all the soul of the divine art and leave nothing but horrid technicalities about consecutive fifths and suspensions on the dominant?  I dare say most people still think of the musician as a being who lives in an enchanted world of sound, rather than as a person greatly occupied with tedious feats of penmanship; just as I myself still think of a prima ballerina not as a hard-working gymnast but as a fairy, whose existence is all bouquets and lime-light.”

“But you had a pretty talent for the piano,” said Lancelot, in milder accents.  “No one forced you to learn composition.  You could have learnt anything for the paltry fifteen pounds exacted by the Conservatoire—­from the German flute to the grand organ; from singing to scoring band parts.”

“No, thank you. Aut Caesar aut nihil.  You remember what I always used to say, ‘Either Beethoven—­’ (The spaniel pricked up his ears)—­’or bust.’  If I could not be a great musician it was hardly worth while enduring the privations of one, especially at another man’s expense.  So I did the Prodigal Son dodge, as you know, and out of the proceeds sent you my year’s exes in that cheque you with your damnable pride sent me back again.  And now, old fellow, that I have you face to face at last, can you offer the faintest scintilla of a shadow of a reason for refusing to take that cheque?  No, you can’t!  Nothing but simple beastly stuckuppishness.  I saw through you at once; all your heroics were a fraud.  I was not your friend, but your protege—­something to practise your chivalry on.  You dropped your cloak, and I saw your feet of clay.  Well, I tell you straight, I made up my mind at once to be bad friends with you for life; only when I saw your fiery old phiz at Brahmson’s I felt a sort of something tugging inside my greatcoat like a thief after my pocket-book, and I kinder knew, as the Americans say, that in half an hour I should be sitting beneath your hospitable roof.”

“I beg your pardon—­you will have some whisky?” He rang the bell violently.

“Don’t be a fool—­you know I didn’t mean that.  Well, don’t let us quarrel.  I have forgiven you for your youthful bounty, and you have forgiven me for chucking it up; and now we are going to drink to the Vaterland,” he added, as Mary Ann appeared with suspicious alacrity.

“Do you know,” he went on, when they had taken the first sip of renewed amity dissolved in whisky, “I think I showed more musical soul than you in refusing to trammel my inspiration with the dull rules invented by fools.  I suppose you have mastered them all, eh?” He picked up some sheets of manuscript.  “Great Scot!  How you must have schooled yourself to scribble all this—­you, with your restless nature—­full scores, too!  I hope you don’t offer this sort of thing to Brahmson.”