He had drawn his chair beside Rainham, and sat with his large, uncouth head propped on one hand, and the latter could perceive that his mouth was twisted with vague irony and some subtile emotion which eluded him.

“You are the great paradox!” he sighed at last.  “For Heaven’s sake, be reasonable!  It is a chance, whoever makes it, and you mustn’t miss it, for the sake of a few—­the just, the pure, the discreet, who do know good work—­as well as for your own.  After all, we are not all gross, and fatuous, and vulgar; there are some of us who know, who care, who make fine distinctions.  Consider us!”

“Consider you?” cried the other quickly.  “Ah, mon gros, don’t I—­more than anything?”

Then he continued in a lighter key: 

“However, I don’t refuse; you take me too literally.  It was the last bitter cry of my spleen.  I have put myself in Mosenthal’s hands; I’ve sold him two pictures.”

“In that case, then, why am I not to be glad?”

“Oh, it’s success!” said Oswyn.  He glanced contemptuously at his frayed shirt-cuff, with the broad stains of paint upon it.  “Be glad, if you like; I am glad in a way.  God knows, I have arrears to make up with the flesh-pots of Egypt.  And I have paid my price for it.  Oh, I have damnably paid my price!”

Rainham shrugged his shoulders absently.

“Yes, one pays,” he agreed—­“one pays, some time or other, to the last penny.”

His friend rose, pushed his chair back impatiently:  he had the air of suppressing some fierce emotion, of anxiously seeking self-control.  At last he moved over to the black square of window, and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out at nothing, at the frosty fantasies which had collected on the glass.

“If it had come ten years ago,” he said in a low, constrained voice, “ten years ago, in Paris....  Oh, man, man!” he went on bitterly, “if you could know, if you could dimly imagine the horrors, the mad, furious horrors, the things I have seen and suffered, since then.”

He pulled himself up sharply, and concluded with a little mirthless laugh, as though he were ashamed of his outburst.

“You would consume a great deal of raw spirit, to take the taste out of your mouth.  And my ‘Medusa’ is to hang for the future in Mr. Mosenthal’s dining-room!  Will he understand her, do you think?”

Rainham was silent, wondering at his friend’s departure from his wonted reticence, which, however, scarcely surprised him.  He had never sought to penetrate the dark background, against which the painter’s solitary figure stood.  He was content to accept him as he was, asking no questions, and hardly forming, even in his own mind, conjectures as to what his previous history and relations might have been.  He was not ignorant, indeed, that he was a man who had been in dark places; it had always seemed possible to account for him on the theory that he lived on the memory of an inextinguishable sorrow.