“Quite an unexpected pleasure?” suggested Oswyn sardonically, nodding over his shoulder at the new-comer from his seat by the fire.

Rainham’s greeting had been far more cordial, and he still held his friend’s hand between his own, gazing inquiringly into his face as if he wished to read something there.

“Yes, I am back, you see,” he said presently, when Dick had found himself a chair.  “I have been here two days, and I was just beginning to think of looking you up.  I was very sorry to miss you at Bordighera.  How is Eve?  It’s very good of you to come all this way to see me; you must be pretty busy.”

“Oh, Eve is tremendously well!  Thanks, no, I won’t have any tea, but you might give me a whisky-and-soda.  I had to come down into these wilds to look at a yacht which we think of taking for the summer.  Quite a small one,” he added half apologetically, as he detected the faint, amused surprise in the other’s expression; “and as I found myself here, with a few minutes to spare before my train goes, I thought I would look in on the off chance of finding you.  How is business just now?  The dock didn’t strike me as looking much like work as I came in.  Pretty stagnant, eh?”

Rainham shook his head.

“Oh, it’s much as usual—­perhaps a little more so!  Bullen continues to threaten me with bankruptcy, but I am getting used to it.  Threatened men live long, you know.”

“Oh, you’re all right!” answered Dick genially.  “As long as Bullen looks after you, you won’t come to grief.”

While the two were thus occupied in reuniting the chain of old associations, Oswyn had been silently, almost surreptitiously, preparing for departure; and he now came forward awkwardly, with his hat in one hand and the tools of his trade under his arm.

“May I leave some of these things, here, or will they be in your way?”

“But you’re not going?” said Rainham, rising from his seat with a constraining gesture; “why, don’t you remember we were going to dine together?  Dick will stay too, n’est ce pas?  It will be like old times.  Mrs. Bullen has been preparing quite a feast, I assure you!”

Oswyn paused irresolutely.

“Don’t let me drive you away,” said Dick.  “In any case I’m going myself in a few minutes.  Yes,” he added, turning to Rainham, “I’m very sorry, but I’ve got to take my wife out to dinner, and I shall have to catch a train in, let me see, about ten minutes.”

“Really?  Well, then, clearly you must sit down again, Oswyn; I won’t be left alone at any price.  That’s right.  Now, Dick, tell me what you have been doing, and especially all about your Academy picture; I haven’t seen even a critique of it.  Of course it’s a success?  Have you sold it?”

“Oh, spare my modesty!” protested Lightmark somewhat clumsily, with a quick glance at Oswyn.  “It’s all right, but we mustn’t talk shop.”

“Yes, for God’s sake spare his modesty!” supplemented the other painter almost brutally.  “Look at his blushes.  It isn’t so bad as all that, Lightmark.”