might yet be jolly times ahead, in which his mother would have her share of the good things that were going, and carking thin-lipped Henry Greech and other of Comus’s detractors could take their sour looks and words out of sight and hearing.  Thus, staring at the picture as though he were studying its every detail, and seeing really only that wistful friendly smile, Comus made his plans and dispositions for a battle that was already fought and lost.

The crowd grew thicker in the galleries, cheerfully enduring an amount of overcrowding that would have been fiercely resented in a railway carriage.  Near the entrance Mervyn Quentock was talking to a Serene Highness, a lady who led a life of obtrusive usefulness, largely imposed on her by a good-natured inability to say “No.”  “That woman creates a positive draught with the number of bazaars she opens,” a frivolously-spoken ex-Cabinet Minister had once remarked.  At the present moment she was being whimsically apologetic.

“When I think of the legions of well-meaning young men and women to whom I’ve given away prizes for proficiency in art-school curriculum, I feel that I ought not to show my face inside a picture gallery.  I always imagine that my punishment in another world will be perpetually sharpening pencils and cleaning palettes for unending relays of misguided young people whom I deliberately encouraged in their artistic delusions.”

“Do you suppose we shall all get appropriate punishments in another world for our sins in this?” asked Quentock.

“Not so much for our sins as for our indiscretions; they are the things which do the most harm and cause the greatest trouble.  I feel certain that Christopher Columbus will undergo the endless torment of being discovered by parties of American tourists.  You see I am quite old fashioned in my ideas about the terrors and inconveniences of the next world.  And now I must be running away; I’ve got to open a Free Library somewhere.  You know the sort of thing that happens—­one unveils a bust of Carlyle and makes a speech about Ruskin, and then people come in their thousands and read ‘Rabid Ralph, or Should he have Bitten Her?’ Don’t forget, please, I’m going to have the medallion with the fat cupid sitting on a sundial.  And just one thing more—­perhaps I ought not to ask you, but you have such nice kind eyes, you embolden one to make daring requests, would you send me the recipe for those lovely chestnut-and-chicken-liver sandwiches?  I know the ingredients of course, but it’s the proportions that make such a difference—­just how much liver to how much chestnut, and what amount of red pepper and other things.  Thank you so much.  I really am going now.”