'em a bit, my boy. You just go ahead, and you'll come
out at the top of the tree."

"I'll do my best," said Wyndham, smiling.

"That'll be good enough, I guess," said Sadler. "Perhaps this portrait
will open up other things for you."

"How so?" inquired Wyndham.

"It all depends on the crowd you strike--I heard you came a bit of a
cropper, and I daresay you're not too well off now to despise a job or
two--you can always put decent work into them. Now there's Jim
Harley--he struck a rich middle-class lot ten years ago, rotten
out-and-out Philistines, twenty guineas apiece--and they've been keeping
him going ever since. Does fifty of 'em a year."

"The prospect hardly tempts me. After all, the main thing is to get back
to big work."

Sadler smiled. "I guess I should be the first to drag you back
again--after a while. But Jimmy married young. A boy and girl affair.
His wife's family weren't satisfied with his financial position, and
there was a mighty row at the time. Of course the girl had only her
pretty eyes."

"Ah, you don't approve of idealistic love affairs."

"Not of that kind. I'm forty, and I've seen something in my time."

Wyndham had finished his purchases, and was telling the assistant to
send the parcel to his studio. As they left the shop presently, Sadler
pressed Wyndham very hard to lunch with him at a particular restaurant
he mentioned, and Wyndham could not do otherwise than accept the
invitation, though he confessed the place was unknown to him. Whereat
Sadler expressed great astonishment. It was one of the very few places
in London where the food was fit to eat! Why, the cooking was even
better than at Lavenue's in the Quarter, and that was saying a great
deal. He, Sadler, could not endure any other place during his
sojournings in London. Wyndham let the dear fellow gallop on to his
heart's content. Sadler was a fine painter, and in the old days Wyndham
as the junior had sat at his feet, and in the matter of technique had
been greatly indebted to him. But he had observed with covert amusement
at a very early stage in the acquaintanceship that Sadler, like so many
others in the hard-working, hand-to-mouth world of the arts, had an
amiable weakness for "being in the know" anent the good things of life,
and affected a lavishness in public that was off-set by a sharp economy
in the less visible phases of his existence.

At the restaurant Sadler scrutinised the carte with the confident eye of
a