t forgotten his
invitation, but he reminded himself of his first impression, and
greeted him with a cordiality which the other seemed to find
surprising. He took him into his sanctuary and found him whisky and
a pipe; then he set himself to make the painter talk, a task which
he found by no means arduous.

Oswyn was sober, and Rainham was surprised after a while at his
sanity. He decided that, though one might differ from him, dissent
from his premises or his conclusions, he was still a man to be taken
seriously. His fluency was as remarkable as ever, and at first as
spleenful; by-and-by his outrageous mood gave way, and, in response
to some of Rainham's adroit thrusts, he condescended to stand on his
defence. He could give a reasonable account of himself; was prepared
clearly, and succinctly, and seriously with his justification.
Rainham was impressed anew by his singleness, the purity of his
artistic passion. His life might be disgraceful, indescribable: his
art lay apart from it; and when he took up a brush an enthusiasm,
a devotion to art, almost religious, steadied his hand.

"You may think me a charlatan," he said, with the same savage
earnestness, "but I can tell you I am not. I may fail or I may
succeed, as the world counts those things. It is all the same: I
believe in myself. It is sufficient to me if I approve myself, and
the world may go to damnation! What I care for is my idea!... yes,
my idea, that's it! They can howl at me," he went on; "but they can
never say of any stroke of my brush that I put it there for them. I
could have painted pictures like Lightmark if I had cared, you know,
but I did not care!"

"And yet he has great facility," said Rainham tentatively.

"He has more," said Oswyn bitterly, "or, at least, he had--genius.
And he has deliberately chosen to go the wrong way, to be
conventional. He can't plead 'invincible ignorance' like the others;
he ought to know better. Well, he has his reward; but I can't
forgive him."

Rainham shrugged his shoulders with something between a sigh and a
laugh.

"Poor boy! he is young, you know. Perhaps he will live to see the
errors of his ways."

"When he's an Academician, I suppose?" suggested the other
ironically. "Do they ever see the errors of their ways? If they do
they don't show it. No; he will marry a rich wife, and make speeches
at banquets, and paint portraits of celebrities, for the rest of his
days. And in fifty years' time people will sa