To get together the materials for even a modest exhibition of the kind which he contemplated, it became necessary for him to ransack old portfolios, and to borrow from dealers, and from his few discriminating private patrons, works which had but recently left his studio and could still be traced; to utilize all the hours of daylight accorded to him by a grudging season for finishing, mounting, and retouching.

The man who made frames for Oswyn knew him of old as an exacting customer and hard to please, who insisted on a rigid adherence to his own designs, and was quick to detect inferior workmanship or material; but during the last few days he had been driven almost to rebellion by the painter’s exigencies; never had such calls been made upon him for flawless glass, and delicately varied shades of gold and silver; never had artist’s eye been so ruthless in the condemnation of imperfect mitres and superfluous plaster.

But now the work of preparation was at an end:  the catalogues had been printed, and his impresario had judiciously circulated invitations to press and public:  the work was done, and the workman felt only weary and indifferent.  If the public howled, what did it matter?  Their hostility would be for him a corroboration, for his Jew an invaluable advertisement.  If they fawned, so much the better:  it would not hurt him, and Mosenthal would still have his advertisement.  If they were indifferent, well, so was he.

The question of pecuniary profit troubled him not at all (though here his Jew joined issue):  what in the world could he do with money, now?  He could paint a picture in a month which would keep him for six, and the dealer who bought it probably for a year.

Margot was already provided for, even handsomely:  in that respect, at least, her first adopted father had left no void for his successor to fill.

So again he shrugged his shoulders.  And upon that evening, for the first time since Rainham’s death, he dined, more solitary and more silent than ever, at his familiar table at Brodonowski’s.  He found that, after all, his nervous anticipation of inconvenient protestations of sympathy was not fulfilled; there were not many men who knew him more than by sight at Brodonowski’s, and the few of his old associates who were there had the good sense to exhibit nothing extraordinary in their demeanour towards him.  Only they were a little less wildly humorous than of old, and more forbearing in their sallies; the conversation died out for an instant as he made his way quickly, with the faintest sign of recognition, through their midst—­and that was all.

Rainham’s death had affected some of them for a few days perhaps, but it had not the shock of the unexpected; they chiefly wondered that he had dragged his life through so cruel a winter.  And his close alliance with Oswyn had, as a natural consequence, debarred him from a real intimacy with any of the other men, who, for the most part younger, cultivated different friendships and different pursuits.