“Nor did I—­not till this moment.  But when it’s a question of defending the honour of a Club-member I always rise to the occasion.  Some things—­they simply make my blood boil.  Look at this referee:  two weeks out of date!  How the blazes is a man—­”

“I say, Charlie, what did the fellow on the ranch want to do with that skunk?  Something about tickling, wasn’t it?”

“Hush, my boy.  We can’t talk about it here.  You’re not old enough yet.  I don’t think I ought to tell you.  It’s too funny for words. . . .”

“You’re a black-and-white man and I’m a writer, and really, you know, we’re a cut above all those sots on the balcony.  Now just be reasonable for a moment.  Look here.  Have you ever thought about the impossibility of realizing colour description in landscape?  It’s struck me a good deal lately, here, with this blue sea, and those orange tints on the mountain, and all the rest of it.  Take any page by a well-known writer—­take a description of a sunset by Symonds, for example.  Well, he names all the gorgeous colours, the yellow and red and violet, or whatever it may be, as he saw them.  But he can’t make you see them—­damned if he can.  He can only throw words at your head.  I’m very much afraid, my dear fellow, that humanity will never get its colour-values straightened out by means of verbal symbols.”

“I always know when a man is drunk, even when I’m drunk myself.”

“When?”

“When he talks about colour-values.”

“I believe you’re right.  I’m feeling a bit muzzy about the legs, as if I couldn’t move.  A bit fuzzy—­”

“Muzzy, I think you said.”

“Fuzzy.”

“Muzzy.  But we needn’t quarrel about it, need we?  I shall be sick in a minute, old man.”

“It’s rather hard on a fellow to be always misunderstood.  However, as I was saying when you interrupted me, I am feeling slightly wobblish in the peripatetic or ambulatorial department.  But my head’s all right.  Now do be serious, for a change.  You don’t seem to catch my drift.  This blue sea, and those orange tints on the mountains, I mean to say—­how are they going to be held fast by the optic apparatus?  The lens, you understand.  I want to be able to shove them into a sketch-book, like you fellows.  Well, how?  That’s what I want to know.  How to turn my retina into a canvas.”

“Rot, my good sir.”

“It may be rot to you, but it strikes me as rather unfortunate, all the same, when you come to think of it.  This blue sea, I mean, and those orange tints and all that, you know.  Take a sunrise by John Addington.  Of course, as a matter of fact, we ought both to have been born in another age—­an age of sinecures.  Why are sinecures extinct?  I feel as if I could be Governor of Madagascar at this moment.”

“I feel as if you were getting slightly intoxicated.”