They were back again at the end of Gray’s Inn Road by half-past four.

“Well, I won’t keep you,” said Harriet, with the sour smile.  “I know you’re in a hurry to be off.  Are you going to walk?”

“Yes; I can do it in about an hour.”

The girl turned away without further leave-taking, and Julian walked southwards with a troubled face.

Waymark expected him to tea.  At this, their third meeting, the two were already on very easy terms.  Waymark did the greater share of the talking, for Julian was naturally of fewer words; from the beginning it was clear that the elder of the friends would have the initiative in most things.  Waymark unconsciously displayed something of that egoism which is inseparable from force of character, and to the other this was far from disagreeable; Julian liked the novel sensation of having a strong nature to rely upon.  Already he was being led by his natural tendency to hero-worship into a fervid admiration for his friend.

“What have you’ been doing with yourself this fine day?” Waymark asked, as they sat down to table.

“I always spend Sunday afternoon with a cousin of mine,” replied Julian, with the unhesitating frankness which was natural to him.

“Male or female?”

“Female.”  There was a touch of colour on his face as he met the other’s eye, and he continued rather quickly.  “We lived together always as children, and were only separated at my uncle’s death, three years ago.  She is engaged at a stationer’s shop.”

“What is a fellow to do to get money?” Waymark exclaimed, when his pipe was well alight.  “I’m growing sick of this hand-to-mouth existence.  Now if one had a bare competency, what glorious possibilities would open out.  The vulgar saying has it that ’time is money;’ like most vulgar sayings putting the thing just the wrong way about.  ‘Money is time,’ I prefer to say; it means leisure, and all that follows.  Why don’t you write a poem on Money, Casti?  I almost feel capable of it myself. what can claim precedence, in all this world, over hard cash?  It is the fruitful soil wherein is nourished the root of the tree of life; it is the vivifying principle of human activity.  Upon it luxuriate art, letters, science; rob them of its sustenance, and they droop like withering leaves.  Money means virtue; the lack of it is vice.  The devil loves no lurking-place like an empty purse.  Give me a thousand pounds to-morrow, and I become the most virtuous man in England.  I satisfy all my instincts freely, openly, with no petty makeshifts and vile hypocrisies.  To scorn and revile wealth is the mere resource of splenetic poverty.  What cannot be purchased with coin of the realm?  First and foremost, freedom.  The moneyed man is the sole king; the herds of the penniless are but as slaves before his footstool.  He breathes with a sense of proprietorship in the whole globe-enveloping atmosphere; for is it not in his power to inhale it wheresoever he pleases?