Lightmark passed from group to group, deftly parrying, and returning the chorus of friendly thrusts, and shaking hands with the affability which was so characteristic a feature of his attitude toward them. The man he looked for, the friend whom he intended to honour with a somewhat tardy confidence of his happiness, was not there. When he asked for Rainham, he was told that "the dry-docker," as these flippant youngsters familiarly designated the silent man, whom they secretly revered, had gone for an after-dinner stroll, or perchance to the theatre, with Oswyn. "With Oswyn?" queried Lightmark, with the shadow of a frown. "Oh, Oswyn and he are getting very thick!" said Copal. "They are almost as inseparable as you two used to be. I'm afraid you will find yourself cut out. Three is an awkward number, you know. But when did you come back? When are you going to show us your sketches? And how long did you stay in Paris?... You _didn't_ stop in Paris? This won't do, you know. I say, Dupuis, here's a man who didn't stop in Paris! Ask him if he wants to insult you." "Ah, mon cher!" expostulated the Frenchman, looking up from his game of dominoes, "I would not stop in London if I could help it." "Oh, shut up, Copal!" said Lightmark good-humouredly. "I was with ladies--Dupuis will sympathize with me there, eh, _mon vieux_?--and they wanted to stay at Lucerne until the last minute. So we came straight through." "Then you haven't seen Sarah in 'Cleopatra,' and we were relying on you for an unvarnished account. Ladies, too! See here, my boy, you won't get any good out of touring about the Continent with ladies. Hang it all! I believe it'll come true, after all?" "Very likely--what?" "Oh, well, they said--I didn't believe it, but they said that you were going to desert the camp, and prance about with corpulent R.A.'s in Hanover Square." "And so would we all, if we got the chance," said McAllister cynically. And after the general outcry which followed this suggestion, the conversation drifted back to the old discussion of the autumn shows, the pastels at the Grosvenor, and the most recent additions to the National Gallery. When at last Rainham came into the room, following, with his habitual half-timid air, the shambling figure of the painter Oswyn, it struck Lightmark that he had grown older, and that he had, as it were, assimilated some of the intimate disreputability of the place: it would no longer have been possible to single him out as a foreign unit in the circle, or to detect in his mental attitude any of the curiosity of the casual seeker after new impressions, the Philistine in Bohemia. There was nothing but pleasure in the slight manifestation of surprise which preceded his frank greeting of Lightmark, a greeting thoroughly English in its matter-of-fact want of demonstrativeness, and the avoidance of anything likely to attract the attention of others.