The elder man laughed his low, mirthless laugh.

“We understand each other, Dick; but you don’t quite do yourself justice—­or me.  I have an immense respect for your talent.  I feel sure you will achieve greatness—­in Burlington House.”

“Well, it’s a respectable institution,” said the young man soberly.

Oswyn finished his drink at a long, thirsty gulp, watching the young man askance with his impressive eyes.  Rainham noticed for the first time that he had a curious trick of smiling with his lips only—­or was it of sneering?—­while the upper part of his face and his heavy brows frowned.

“By the way, Lightmark,” he observed presently, “I have to congratulate you on your renown.  There is quite a long panegyric on your picture in the Outcry this week.  Do you know who wrote it?”

“Damn it, man!” broke out Lightmark, with a vehemence which, to Rainham, seemed uncalled for, “how should I know?  I haven’t seen the rag for an age.”

There was an angry light in his eyes, but it faded immediately.

Oswyn continued apologetically: 

“I beg your pardon.  It must be very annoying to you to be puffed indiscreetly.  But I fancied, you know——­”

Lightmark, flushing a little, interrupted him, laying his hand with a quick gesture, that might have contained an appeal in it, on the painter’s frayed coat-sleeve.

“Your glass is empty, and we are about ready for our coffee.  What will you take?”

Oswyn repeated his order, smiling still a little remotely, as he let the water trickle down from a scientific height to his glass, whipping the crystal green of its contents into a nebulous yellow.  Rainham, who had listened to the little passage of arms in silence, felt troubled, uneasy.  The air seemed thunderous, and was heavy with unspoken words.  There appeared to be an under-current of understanding between the two painters which was the reverse of sympathetic, and made conversation difficult and volcanic.  It caused him to remind himself, a trifle sadly, how little, after all, one knew of even one’s nearest friend—­and Lightmark, perhaps, occupied to him that relation—­how much of the country of his mind remains perpetually undiscovered; and it made him wonder, as he had sometimes wondered before, whether the very open and sunny nature of the young painter, which was so large a part of his charm, had not its concealed shadows—­how far, briefly, Lightmark’s very frankness might not be a refinement of secretiveness?

If, however, a word here and there, a trait surprised, indefinable, led him on occasion to doubt of his dominant impression of Lightmark’s character, these doubts were never of long duration; and he would dismiss them, barely entertained, even as a sort of disloyalty, to the limbo of stillborn fancies.  And so now, with his accustomed generosity, he speedily flung himself into the breach, and did his best to drive