Yet that was a confession of failure he was loath to make, or admit that he had been too much afraid of high passions and great affairs, had been fastidious and reserved only to dissipate his life on whims and small interests—­those seemed to him now too great refusals to be contemplated without regret.  His depression had reached its lowest pitch when he had asked himself whether in love, as in life, his error might not have been the same; and his passion, like the rest, a thing without conviction, and thereby foredoomed to fail.  And it was a sensible alleviation of his mood when he could answer this question finally with a firm negative.

Certainly, his vain desire for her personal presence, for the consolation of her voice and eyes, was with him always, like the ache of physical hunger or thirst—­the one thing real in a world of shadows.

Reaching this point one night, and relapsing, as was his wont, into a vaguer mood of reminiscence, not wholly unpleasant, which the darkness of the quiet room, lit only by the fire of logs, turned at last into drowsiness, he looked up presently, with a sudden start, to find Oswyn standing over him.

“I am sorry,” said the painter; “I am afraid I have awaked you.  The room was so dark that I imagined you had gone to bed.  I came to warm myself before turning in.”

Rainham shifted his chair a little, and watched the other as he extended his thin, nervous hands to the glow.

“Don’t apologize,” he said; “I haven’t so many visitors that I can afford to miss the best of them.  Besides, I was only half asleep, or half awake, as you like to look at it.”

“Oh, look at it!” cried Oswyn.  “My dear fellow, I don’t, and won’t.”

He pointed his words, which Rainham found meaningless enough, with an impatient dig of his rusty boot against the fragrant wood, and his friend considered him curiously in the light of the blaze which his gesture had provoked.

“Is there anything wrong?” he asked.  “More wrong than usual, I mean.”

“As you like to look at it,” echoed the other; “a mare’s nest—­a discovery of the blessed public—­oh, but a discovery!  Two or three clever young newspaper men, with a tip from Paris to help them, have made a discovery; they have unearthed a disreputable painting genius, one Oswyn, and found the inevitable Jew of culture—­you know the type, all nose and shekels—­to finance their boom.  Oh, it’s genuine!  I have Mosenthal’s letter in my pocket—­it was handed me by McAllister—­offering his gallery, the pick of Bond Street.  Oswyn’s Exhibition, with expurgations and reservations, of course, but an exhibition!  Don’t you congratulate me?”

Rainham glanced up at him, smiling; at last he said whimsically: 

“If you don’t want me to, of course I won’t.  But apres, where’s the harm?”

“Ah, they don’t understand,” cried the other quickly, acridly.  “They don’t understand.”