said Wyndham, "your sympathy
with labour surprises me equally."

"Why so?" asked Mr. Robinson.

"The natural antagonism between capital and labour!" smiled Wyndham.

"Oh, I started as a poor boy--right at the foot of the ladder,"
explained Mr. Robinson. "My father was a carpenter. Wages were low in
those days, and prices of all necessaries were high. I remember in my
childhood we had a pretty hard time of it. In my own firm we share the
profits with all the employees. So you see I'm rather partial to labour
so long as it's decent and reasonable. When I think of my own struggles,
I like to see every man get fair opportunities. When a man has no
particular talent--such as myself, for instance--it is ever so much the
harder to go through discouragements. But, at the worst of times, it
must be a great thing for a gifted man like yourself to be conscious of
his own powers."

"So you set up to have no particular talent!" explained Wyndham. "You
amuse me. Haven't you made your fortune unaided? I confess that that
seems to me the most difficult thing in the world--immensely cleverer
than anything in the way of art or painting."

Mr. Robinson laughed. "Now you're making fun of me."

"I was never more serious in my life," insisted Wyndham, now wheeling
forward a smaller easel, in order to display the pictures he had at
first selected. "I consider it frightfully clever to make money."

"My dear sir, fools often make money," Mr. Robinson assured him.

Wyndham shook his head incredulously. "Do you care much about this
landscape?" he asked.

"Very much indeed. It is so green and fresh and airy, and those are
grand old trees."

"It's our old home in Hertfordshire. I lost the property and a modest
fortune through a rascally set of lawyers."

Mr. Robinson's face expressed deep concern. "Yes, I remember the affair
well," he said. "I remember reading it over the breakfast-table to my
wife and daughter. We saw your name among the creditors. It was a bad
business."

"They had managed all our family concerns for thirty years."

Wyndham was now wound up to enter into more personal matters than he had
so far touched upon. As before, he was perfectly frank, recounting in
the intimacy of the moment all the details of this financial
catastrophe. He spoke freely of his relations in the country, and of his
sister Mary, and the independent way in which she was earning her bread;
passing from canvas to canvas the while, and breaking o