“Why didn’t you answer my letter, you impolite old bear?” Peter asked, warding off Beethoven with his umbrella.

“I was busy,” Lancelot replied pettishly.

“Busy writing rubbish.  Haven’t you got ‘Ops.’ enough?  I bet you haven’t had anything published yet.”

“I am working at a grand opera,” he said in dry, mechanical tones.  “I have hopes of getting it put on.  Gasco, the impresario, is a member of my club, and he thinks of running a season in the autumn.  I had a talk with him yesterday.”

“I hope I shall live to see it,” said Peter, sceptically.

“I hope you will,” said Lancelot, sharply.

“None of my family ever lived beyond ninety,” said Peter, shaking his head dolefully; “and then, my heart is not so good as it might be.”

“It certainly isn’t!” cried poor Lancelot.  “But everybody hits a chap when he’s down.”

He turned his head away, striving to swallow the lump that would rise to his throat.  He had a sense of infinite wretchedness and loneliness.

“Oh, poor old chap; is it so bad as all that?” Peter’s somewhat strident voice had grown tender as a woman’s.  He laid his hand affectionately on Lancelot’s tumbled hair.  “You know I believe in you with all my soul.  I never doubted your genius for a moment.  Don’t I know too well that’s what keeps you back?  Come, come, old fellow.  Can’t I persuade you to write rot?  One must keep the pot boiling, you know.  You turn out a dozen popular ballads, and the coin’ll follow your music as the rats did the pied piper’s.  Then, if you have any ambition left, you kick away the ladder by which you mounted, and stand on the heights of art.”

“Never!” cried Lancelot.  “It would degrade me in my own eyes.  I’d rather starve; and you can’t shake them off—­the first impression is everything; they would always be remembered against me,” he added after a pause.

“Motives mixed,” reflected Peter.  “That’s a good sign.”  Aloud he said, “Well, you think it over.  This is a practical world, old man; it wasn’t made for dreamers.  And one of the first dreams that you’ve got to wake from is the dream that anybody connected with the stage can be relied on from one day to the next.  They gas for the sake of gassing, or they tell you pleasant lies out of mere goodwill, just as they call for your drinks.  Their promises are beautiful bubbles, on a basis of soft soap, and made to ‘bust.’”

“You grow quite eloquent,” said Lancelot, with a wan smile.

“Eloquent!  There’s more in me than you’ve yet found out.  Now then!  Give us your hand that you’ll chuck art, and we’ll drink to your popular ballad—­hundredth thousand edition, no drawing-room should be without it.”

Lancelot flushed.  “I was just going to have some tea.  I think it’s five o’clock,” he murmured.

“The very thing I’m dying for,” cried Peter, energetically; “I’m as parched as a pea.”  Inwardly he was shocked to find the stream of whisky run dry.