you are in London and
the Dollonds are at Bordighera. You don't know Mrs. Dollond?" he
added, seeing that the other looked at him with a certain air of
wistful distrust, a momentarily visible desire to see behind so
obvious a veil.

"No, thank God!" said Oswyn devoutly, shrugging his bent shoulders,
and turning away with a relapse into his unwonted impassiveness.

"But you have apparently heard of her," continued Rainham, with an
effort toward humour. "And I am afraid people have been slandering
her. She is a very excellent person, the soul of good-nature, and as
amusing as--as an American comic paper! But in my present state of
health I'm afraid she would be a little too much for me. I can stand
her in homeopathic doses, but the Riviera isn't nearly big enough
for the two of us as permanencies. No, I think I shall wait until
next winter now."

Oswyn shot a quick glance at him, and then looked away as suddenly,
and after a brief silence they parted.

Rainham was already beginning to consider himself secure from the
inconvenient allusions to Lightmark and their altered relations,
which he had at first nervously anticipated. Oswyn rarely mentioned
the other painter's name, and accepted, without surprise or the
faintest appearance of a desire for explanation, the self-evident
fact of the breach between the two quondam allies; regarding it as
in the natural course of events, and as an additional link in the
chain of their intimacy. Indeed, Lightmark had long ceased to be a
component element of the atmosphere of Brodonowski's: he no longer
brought the sunshine of his expansive, elaborate presence into the
limits of the dingy little place; nor did its clever, shabby
constituents, with their bright-eyed contempt for the popular
slaves of a fatuous public, care to swell the successful throng who
worshipped the rising genius in his new temple in Grove Road. The
fact that in those days Rainham avoided Lightmark's name, once so
often quoted; his demeanour, when the more ignorant or less tactical
of their mutual acquaintances pressed him with inquiries as to the
well-being and work of his former friend, had not failed to suggest
to the intimate circle that there had been a rupture, a change,
something far more significant than the general severance which had
gradually been effected between them, the unreclaimed children of
the desert, and Richard Lightmark, the brilliant society painter;
something as to which it seemed that