Rainham smiled as he recognised occasionally the grotesque travesty of a familiar face.  Presently his eyes were arrested by a drawing which was new to him, a face of striking ugliness, offering advantages to the caricaturist of which, doubtless, he had not omitted to avail himself.  It imposed itself on Rainham, for the savage strength which it displayed, and for an element in its hideousness which suggested beauty.  He was still absorbed in the study of this face when Lightmark entered and took his place opposite him with a brief apology for his tardiness.  He was dressed well, with a white orchid in his button-hole, and looked prosperous and rosy.  Some light badinage on this score from his various acquaintances in the restaurant he parried with a good-humoured nonchalance; then he betook himself to consideration of the menu.

“I have been calling on your friends, the Sylvesters,” he explained after a while, “and I could not get away before.  My uncle was there, by the way.  You have heard me speak of him?”

“Your uncle, who holds such a lax view of the avuncular offices?”

Lightmark smiled a little self-congratulatory smile.

“Ah, that’s changed.  The old boy was deuced friendly—­gave me his whole hand instead of two fingers, and asked me to dine with him.  I think,” he went on after a moment, “the Sylvesters have been putting in a good word for me.  Or perhaps it was Mrs. Sylvester’s portrait which did the job.”

“Ah,” said Rainham, “you have painted her, have you?”

Their fish occupied them in silence.  Lightmark, a trifle flushed from his rapid walk, smiled from time to time absently, as though his thoughts were pleasant ones.  The older man thought he had seldom seen him looking more boyishly handsome.  Presently his eyes again caught the head which had so struck his fancy.

“Is that yours, Dick?” he asked.

Lightmark followed the direction of his eyes to the opposite wall.

“I believe it is,” he remarked, with a shade of deprecation in his manner.  “It is Oswyn.  Don’t you know him?”

“I don’t know him,” said the other, sipping his thin Medoc.  “But I think I should like to.  What is he?”

“He will be here soon, no doubt, and then you will see for yourself.  He is Oswyn!  I knew him in Paris better than I do now.  He was in B——­’s studio; and B——­ swore that he had a magnificent genius.  He painted a monstrous picture which the Salon wouldn’t hang; but B——­ bought it, and hung it in his studio, where it frightened his models into fits.  Last year he came to London, where he makes enough, when he is sober, by painting pot-boilers for the dealers, to keep him in absinthe and tobacco, which are apparently his sole sustenance.  In the meanwhile he is painting a masterpiece; at least, so he will tell you.  He is a virulent fanatic, whose art is the most monstrous thing imaginable.  He is—­but talk of the devil——­”