tists and authors simply wallow in
them? Have you got any cigarettes, or papers? I dropped mine into a
puddle. Ah, thanks.... That's a pretty face. Whose is it?"

The cigarette case, which Rainham handed to his guest, was a
well-worn leather one, a somewhat ladylike article, with a
photograph fitted into the dividing flap inside. Before answering
the question he looked at the photograph absently for a moment, when
the case had been returned to him.

"It's not a very good photograph. It's meant for--for Mrs.
Lightmark, when she was a little girl. She gave me the case with the
portrait years ago, in Florence."

Oswyn glanced at him curiously and shrewdly through a thin haze of
blue smoke, watching him restore the faded, little receptacle almost
reverentially to the breast-pocket of his coat.

"Have you been to the Chamber of Horrors?" he asked suddenly, after
a silent pause, broken only by the ceaseless lashing of the window
by the raindrops.

Rainham looked up with a start, half puzzled, seeking and finding an
explanation in the faint, conscious humour which loosened the lines
about the speaker's mouth.

"The Chamber of---- Do you mean the R.A.? You do, you most
irreverent of mortals! No, I have not been yet. Will you go with
me?"

"Heaven forbid! I have been once."

"You have? And they didn't scalp you?"

"I didn't stay long enough, I suppose. I only went to see one
picture--Lightmark's."

"Ah, that's just what I want to see! And you know I still have a
weakness for the show. I expect you would like the new Salon
better."

"There are good things there," said Oswyn tersely, "and a great many
abominations as well. I was over in Paris last week."

Rainham glanced at him over his cup with a certain surprise.

"I didn't know you ever went there now," he remarked.

"No, I never go if I can help it. I hate Paris; it is _triste_ as a
well, and full of ghosts. Ghosts! It's a city of the dead. But I had
a picture there this time, and I went to look at it."

"In the new Salon?"

"In the new Salon. It was a little gray, dusky thing, three foot by
two, and their flaming miles of canvas murdered it. I am not a
scene-painter," he went on a little savagely. "I don't paint with a
broom, and I have no ambition to do the sun, or an eruption of
Vesuvius. So I doubt if I shall exhibit there again until the vogue
alters. Oh, they are clever enough, those fellows! even the
trickiest of them can draw, which is the last t