ays felt he must be taken as
he was, but had never perhaps found him so much of that pattern as on
this occasion. 'You chuck Cambridge then altogether? Doesn't that seem
rather a pity?'

Lance would have been like his father, to his friend's sense, had he
had less humour, and like his mother had he had more beauty. Yet it
was a good middle way for Peter that, in the modern manner, he was,
to the eye, rather the young stock-broker than the young artist. The
youth reasoned that it was a question of time--there was such a mill
to go through, such an awful lot to learn. He had talked with fellows
and had judged. 'One has got, today,' he said, 'don't you see? to
know.'

His interlocutor, at this, gave a groan. 'Oh hang it, _don't_ know!'

Lance wondered. '"Don't"? Then what's the use--?'

'The use of what?'

'Why of anything. Don't you think I've talent?'

Peter smoked away for a little in silence; then went on: 'It isn't
knowledge, it's ignorance that--as we've been beautifully told--is
bliss.'

'Don't you think I've talent?' Lance repeated.

Peter, with his trick of queer kind demonstrations, passed his arm
round his godson and held him a moment. 'How do I know?'

'Oh,' said the boy, 'if it's your own ignorance you're defending--!'

Again, for a pause, on the sofa, his godfather smoked. 'It isn't. I've
the misfortune to be omniscient.'

'Oh well,' Lance laughed again, 'if you know _too_ much--!'

'That's what I do, and it's why I'm so wretched.'

Lance's gaiety grew. 'Wretched? Come, I say!'

'But I forgot,' his companion went on--'you're not to know about that.
It would indeed for you too make the too much. Only I'll tell you what
I'll do.' And Peter got up from the sofa. 'If you'll go up again I'll
pay your way at Cambridge.'

Lance stared, a little rueful in spite of being still more amused. 'Oh
Peter! You disapprove so of Paris?'

'Well, I'm afraid of it.'

'Ah I see!'

'No, you don't see--yet. But you will--that is you would. And you
mustn't.'

The young man thought more gravely. 'But one's innocence, already--!'

'Is considerably damaged? Ah that won't matter,' Peter
persisted--'we'll patch it up here.'

'Here? Then you want me to stay at home?'

Peter almost confessed to it. 'Well, we're so right--we four
together--just as we are. We're so safe. Come, don't spoil it.'

The boy, who had turned to gravity, turned from this, on the real
pressure of his friend's tone, to consternation. 'Th