“I couldn’t come back!” he muttered “I couldn’t!”

“That’s all very well,” Mr. Waddington objected, “but if this thing really passes off, you’ll be only too glad to.  I suppose I shall flirt with Milly again, and drink beer, give up Ruskin for the Sporting Times, wear loud clothes, tell most frightful falsehoods when I sell that terrible furniture and buy another trotting horse to drive out on Sundays.  Oh, Lord!”

Mr. Waddington rose slowly to his feet.  He lit a cigarette, sniffed it, and looked at it disparagingly.  It was very fine Turkish tobacco and one of Burton’s extravagances.

“I am not sure, after all,” he declared, “that there isn’t more flavor in a British cigar.”

Burton shuddered

“You had better take a bean at once,” he groaned.  “Those cigarettes are made from the finest tobacco imported.”

Mr. Waddington felt in his waistcoat pocket with trembling fingers, slowly produced a little silver box, took out a bean and crunched it between his teeth.  An expression of immense relief at once spread over his features.  He sniffed at his cigarette with an air of keen appreciation, and deliberately handed over to Burton his share of the remaining beans.

“I am myself again,” he declared firmly.  “I can feel the change already.”

Burton eyed him anxiously.

“Cigarette taste all right now?”

“Delicious!” Mr. Waddington replied.  “Most exquisite tobacco!  Makes me shiver inside to think how I could ever have smoked that other filthy rubbish.”

“No idea of calling in at the Golden Lion on your way back, eh?” Burton persisted.

Mr. Waddington’s expression was full of reproach.  “The very thought of that place, with its smell of stale beer and those awful creatures behind the bar, makes me shiver,” he confessed.  “I shall walk for an hour before lunch in Kensington Gardens.  If I have a moment to spare I shall run into the Museum and spend a little time with the mosaics.  What a charming effect the sunlight has coming through those trees, Burton!  I want you to come down and see my rooms sometime.  I have picked up a few trifles that I think you would appreciate.”

“I will come with pleasure,” Burton replied.  “This afternoon, if you could spare a few minutes?” the auctioneer suggested.  “We might go around and look at that Romney which has just been unearthed.  I have been to Christie’s three times already to see it, but I should like to take you.  There’s something about the face which I don’t quite understand.  There is a landscape there, too, just sent up from some country house, which I think would interest you.”

Burton shook his head and moved feverishly towards his desk.

“I am going to work,” he declared.  “You have frightened me a little.  I must economize time.  I shall write a novel, a novel of real life.  I must write it while I can still see the perfect truth.”