Street. Oswyn's
Exhibition, with expurgations and reservations, of course, but an
exhibition! Don't you congratulate me?"

Rainham glanced up at him, smiling; at last he said whimsically:

"If you don't want me to, of course I won't. But _apres_, where's the
harm?"

"Ah, they don't understand," cried the other quickly, acridly. "They
don't understand."

He had drawn his chair beside Rainham, and sat with his large,
uncouth head propped on one hand, and the latter could perceive that
his mouth was twisted with vague irony and some subtile emotion
which eluded him.

"You are the great paradox!" he sighed at last. "For Heaven's sake,
be reasonable! It is a chance, whoever makes it, and you mustn't
miss it, for the sake of a few--the just, the pure, the discreet,
who do know good work--as well as for your own. After all, we are
not all gross, and fatuous, and vulgar; there are some of us who
know, who care, who make fine distinctions. Consider us!"

"Consider you?" cried the other quickly. "Ah, _mon gros_, don't
I--more than anything?"

Then he continued in a lighter key:

"However, I don't refuse; you take me too literally. It was the last
bitter cry of my spleen. I have put myself in Mosenthal's hands;
I've sold him two pictures."

"In that case, then, why am I not to be glad?"

"Oh, it's success!" said Oswyn. He glanced contemptuously at his
frayed shirt-cuff, with the broad stains of paint upon it. "Be glad,
if you like; I am glad in a way. God knows, I have arrears to make
up with the flesh-pots of Egypt. And I have paid my price for it.
Oh, I have damnably paid my price!"

Rainham shrugged his shoulders absently.

"Yes, one pays," he agreed--"one pays, some time or other, to the
last penny."

His friend rose, pushed his chair back impatiently: he had the air
of suppressing some fierce emotion, of anxiously seeking
self-control. At last he moved over to the black square of window,
and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out at nothing, at
the frosty fantasies which had collected on the glass.

"If it had come ten years ago," he said in a low, constrained voice,
"ten years ago, in Paris.... Oh, man, man!" he went on bitterly, "if
you could know, if you could dimly imagine the horrors, the mad,
furious horrors, the things I have seen and suffered, since then."

He pulled himself up sharply, and concluded with a little mirthless
laugh, as though he were ashamed of his outburst.

"You would