“I don’t even know the subject,” pursued Rainham.  “You might at least tell me what it was.  Was it the canvas which you wouldn’t show me, just before I went away—­at the studio?  The one about which you made such a mystery——?”

“Oh bosh, old man!” interrupted Dick hurriedly, “I never made any mystery.  It—­it wasn’t that.  It’s quite an ordinary subject, one of the river scenes which I sketched here.  You had better go and see it.  And come and see us.  You know the address.  I must be off!”

“Wait a minute,” interposed Oswyn, with a cadence in his voice which struck Rainham as the signal of something surpassing his wonted eccentricity.  “Don’t go yet.  I said just now, Rainham, that I wouldn’t tell you why I had painted out that picture, the picture which I had been fool enough to talk about so much, which I had intended to make a masterpiece.  Well, I have changed my mind.  I think you ought to know.  Perhaps you would prefer to tell him?” he added, turning savagely to Lightmark, and speaking fast and loud with the curious muscular tremor which betokens difficult restraint.  “No?  Of course you will have the impudence to pretend that the conception was yours.  Yes, curse you! you are quite capable of swearing that it was all yours—­subject and treatment too....  But you can’t deny that you heard me talking of the thing night after night at the club, when I have no doubt you hadn’t even begun on your bastard imitation.  One of the pictures of the year as they call it, as you and your damned crew of flatterers and critics call it....”

He stopped for breath, clutching at the table with one hand and letting the other, which had been upraised in denunciation, fall at his side.  He had meant to be calm, to limit himself strictly to an explanation; but in the face of his wrong and the wrong-doer the man’s passionate nature had broken loose.  Now, when he already half repented of the violence with which he had profaned the house of his friend, his eyes fell upon Rainham, and he felt abashed before the expression of pain which he had called into the other’s face.

“I don’t know what all this means,” said Rainham wearily, turning from Oswyn to Dick as he spoke; “but surely it is all wrong?  Be quiet, Dick; you needn’t say anything.  If Oswyn is accusing you of plagiarism, of stealing his ideas, I can’t believe it.  I can’t believe you meant to wrong him.  The same thing must have occurred to both of you.  Why, Oswyn, surely you see that?  You have both been painting here, and you were both struck in the same way.  Nothing could be simpler.”

Now Lightmark seemed to assume a more confident attitude, to become more like himself; and he was about to break the chain of silence, which had held him almost voiceless throughout Oswyn’s attack, when Rainham again interrupted him.

“I am sure you needn’t say anything, Dick.  We all know Oswyn; he—­he wasn’t serious.  Go and catch your train, and forget all about it.”