"This is really very interesting! Rainham vice-president, too! I thought he looked rather--rather worn by the cares of the office. You must make me a member at once. But who's president?" "President? Who _is_ president, McAllister? I really forget. You see, whenever the president is caught speaking too candidly of any of our clients' characters, we pass a vote of censure, and depose him, and he has to stand drinks. The competition isn't so keen as it used to be. If you would like to stand--for the office, I mean--I dare say there will be an opening soon.... Well, I must be off: I'm afraid of Mrs. Grumbit, and--yes, by Jove!--I've forgotten my latchkey again! Of course you're not coming yet, Dick? Come and breakfast with me to-morrow. Good-night, you fellows!" "Copal has been in great form to-night," said Lightmark, after the door had closed on him, getting up and stretching himself. "What does it mean? Joy at my return? Fatted calf?" "No doubt, my boy, no doubt," growled McAllister humorously, on his way to the door. "But you must bear in mind, too, the circumstance that the laddie's just sold a picture." "Good business!" ejaculated Lightmark, as he reflected to himself that perhaps that despaired-of fiver would be repaid after all. About midnight most of the men left. Rainham remained, and Lightmark, who professed himself too lazy to move. Rainham lapsed into his familiar state of half-abstraction, while his friend cross-examined a young sculptor fresh from Rome. At the next table Oswyn was holding forth, with eager gesticulations and the excitement of the hour in his eyes, on the subject of a picture which he contemplated painting in oils for exhibition at the Salon next year. Rainham had heard it all before; still, he listened with a keen appreciation of the wonderful touch with which the little, dishevelled artist enlarged on the capabilities of his choice, the possibilities of colour and treatment. The picture was to be painted at the dock, and the painter had already achieved a daringly suggestive impression in pastels of the familiar night-scene which he now described: the streaming, vivid torches, their rays struggling and drowning in the murky water, glimmering faintly in the windows of the black warehouse barely suggested at the side; the alert, swarming sailors, busy with ropes and tackle; and in the middle the dark, steep leviathan, fresh from the sea-storms, growing, as it were, out of the impenetrable chaos of the foggy background, in which the river-lights gleamed like opals set in dull ebony.