iled the speaker, as it soon did,
Lightmark continued to look at him askance, with an air of absent
consideration turning to uneasiness. There was a general silence,
broken only by the occasional striking of a match and the knocking
of pipe against boot-heel. Soon the young sculptor discovered that
he had missed his last train, and fled incontinently. Oswyn settled
himself back in his chair, as one who has no regard for time, and
rolled a cigarette, the animation with which he had spoken now only
perceptible in the points of colour in either cheek. Rainham and
Lightmark left him a few minutes later, the last of the revellers,
drawing the cat with the charred end of a match on the back of an
envelope, and too deeply engrossed to notice their departure.

The fog had vanished, and the moon shone softly, through a white
wreath of clouds, over the straggling line of house-tops. The
narrow, squalid, little street was deserted, and the sound of wheels
in the busier thoroughfare at the end was very intermittent.

Lightmark buttoned his gloves deliberately, and drew a long breath
of the night air before he broke the silence.

"It's on occasions like this that I wish Bloomsbury and Kensington
lay in the same direction--from here, you know; we should save a
fortune in cab-fares.... But--but that wasn't what I wanted to say.
Philip, my dear fellow, congratulate me."

He paused for a minute looking at the other curiously, with
something of a melodramatic pose. Rainham had his face turned rather
away, and was gazing at the pale reflection of the moonlight in one
of the opposite windows.

"I know," he said simply. "I _do_ congratulate you--from the bottom
of my heart. And I hope you will make her happy." Then he turned and
looked Lightmark in the face. "I suppose you _do_ love her, Dick?"

"I suppose I do. But how the deuce did you know anything about it? I
have been blaming myself, needlessly it appears, for not letting you
hear of it. Has it--has it been in the papers?"

Rainham laughed in spite of himself.

"Approaching marriage of a celebrated artist? No, Dick, I don't
think it has. Lady Garnett told me more than a week ago."

"Oh," said Dick blankly. "I--I'm much obliged to her. I thought
perhaps it was the Colonel; I wrote to him, you know, and I thought
he was a discreet old bird. But how did Lady Garnett know?"

"She seemed to think it was no secret," said Rainham, with a
suggestion of apology in his tone; "and, of