man about town, grumbled a little, held a fussy colloquy with the
waiter, and finally ordered oysters and chablis to begin upon, the while
a chateaubriand was being prepared for them.

Over the meal Sadler talked a great deal of old times. He seemed to have
kept himself well in touch with scores of men they had known in common,
despite scatterings and vicissitudes. His mind kept leaping across the
world, beating them all out of their lairs for Wyndham's enlightenment.
Did he remember Pycherley--the biggest duffer of them all? Well, he had
married an heiress on the strength of his genius, and was painting awful
stuff out in California; and Snyders, who had shared his studio, had
built himself a Moorish house high up on a mountain-side overlooking the
Gulf of Salerno; a third had settled down to "black-and-white" in a
queer little creeper-clad house in St. John's Wood; a fourth was
decorating a municipal building at Toronto. Marlowe was still in the
avenue du Maine, where the fascinating American actress he had wed had
since borne him a sheaf of daughters: and the beautiful Mrs. Smith they
had known at Fontainebleau, the summer they had spent there together,
had long ago divorced her husband, and married the Italian sculptor, in
whose studio she had made such sensational progress. She now exhibited
regularly, and had already received a gold medal of the second class.

And so the conversation continued--for the most part about men who were
now pretty well getting on into middle life, whose destinies had found
definite declaration and were visible to all Wyndham expressed his
pleasure that his own future, on the contrary, still lay wrapped in
mystery; that, though the curtain was full up, the interest of the drama
was by no means played out.

"You can afford to talk like that, Wyndham," shouted Sadler. "What are
you? You're only a boy! But I'm forty, and I tell you I'd give up the
interest of the drama for a safe income, and think it a damned good
bargain. I get along, I sell my stuff, but I tell you I sweat and
groan."

"I admit I should like my old income back again," said Wyndham; "not for
itself, but for the sake of the splendid freedom to work."

"That's just my point," shouted Sadler. "What the hell do I care about
money for itself? And I tell you what, my boy, the right thing for an
artist is to marry a woman with money." He struck the table hard with
his big fist, making the whole restaurant rattle.

Wyndham a