murmured dreamily. He
seemed to be wrestling with himself; and apparently he overcame. When
he had eaten his banana his face was flushed and almost firm.

"I'll not take it. He sticks in my throat, does Freddy."

Rickman left the table. If he had disliked Dicky when he was callous,
he loathed him when he was kind.

He threw open the window, and sat on the ledge. The breeze had died
down and the heat in the little hotel was stifling. Across the passage
glasses clinked in the bar, sounding a suitable accompaniment to the
voice of Dicky. From time to time bursts of laughter came from the
billiard-room overhead. Outside there, in the night, the sea smothered
these jarring human notes with its own majestic tumult. Rickman,
giving up his sickened senses to the night and the sea, was fortunate
enough to miss a great deal that Pilkington was saying.

For Dicky, still seated at the table, talked on. He had mingled soda
with whisky, and as he drank it, the veil of our earthly life lifted
for Dicky, and there was revealed to him the underlying verity, the
fabric of the world. In other words, Dicky had arrived at the inspired
moment of the evening, and was chanting the Hymn of Finance.

"Look," said Dicky, "at the Power it gives you. Now all you writing
chaps, you know, you're not in it, you're not in it at all. You're
simply 'opping and dodging round the outside--you 'aven't a chance of
really seeing the show. Whereas--look at _me_. I go and take my seat
plump down in the middle of the stage box. I've got my ear to the
heart of 'Umanity and my 'and on its pulse. I've got a grip of
realities. You say you want to por-tray life. Very well, por-tray it.
When all's said and done you've only got a picture. And wot's a
picture, if it's ever so lifelike? You 'aven't got a bit nearer to the
real thing. I tell you, you aren't in it with me. I'd have been a
writer myself if I'd thought it was good enough. I began that way; but
as to going back to it, you might just as well expect me to go back to
kissing a woman's photo when I can put my arm round her waist."

And Dicky, gracefully descending on the wings of his metaphor,
alighted on Miss Poppy Grace. But to Rickman the figure of Poppy, once
an obsession, was now as indistinct as the figure of Dicky seen
through a cloud of tobacco smoke. He was roused by a more direct
appeal, and what seemed to him a violent change of theme.

"Did you notice what rum eyes Miss Harden's got? They have