When the tide of inspiration failed the speaker, as it soon did, Lightmark continued to look at him askance, with an air of absent consideration turning to uneasiness. There was a general silence, broken only by the occasional striking of a match and the knocking of pipe against boot-heel. Soon the young sculptor discovered that he had missed his last train, and fled incontinently. Oswyn settled himself back in his chair, as one who has no regard for time, and rolled a cigarette, the animation with which he had spoken now only perceptible in the points of colour in either cheek. Rainham and Lightmark left him a few minutes later, the last of the revellers, drawing the cat with the charred end of a match on the back of an envelope, and too deeply engrossed to notice their departure. The fog had vanished, and the moon shone softly, through a white wreath of clouds, over the straggling line of house-tops. The narrow, squalid, little street was deserted, and the sound of wheels in the busier thoroughfare at the end was very intermittent. Lightmark buttoned his gloves deliberately, and drew a long breath of the night air before he broke the silence. "It's on occasions like this that I wish Bloomsbury and Kensington lay in the same direction--from here, you know; we should save a fortune in cab-fares.... But--but that wasn't what I wanted to say. Philip, my dear fellow, congratulate me." He paused for a minute looking at the other curiously, with something of a melodramatic pose. Rainham had his face turned rather away, and was gazing at the pale reflection of the moonlight in one of the opposite windows. "I know," he said simply. "I _do_ congratulate you--from the bottom of my heart. And I hope you will make her happy." Then he turned and looked Lightmark in the face. "I suppose you _do_ love her, Dick?" "I suppose I do. But how the deuce did you know anything about it? I have been blaming myself, needlessly it appears, for not letting you hear of it. Has it--has it been in the papers?" Rainham laughed in spite of himself. "Approaching marriage of a celebrated artist? No, Dick, I don't think it has. Lady Garnett told me more than a week ago." "Oh," said Dick blankly. "I--I'm much obliged to her. I thought perhaps it was the Colonel; I wrote to him, you know, and I thought he was a discreet old bird. But how did Lady Garnett know?" "She seemed to think it was no secret," said Rainham, with a suggestion of apology in his tone; "and, of course, she knows that I am----" "My best friend," interposed the other impulsively. "So you are. And I ought to have told you; I was a brute. And I feel like the devil about it.... Well, it can't be helped. Will you have this cab, or shall I?" Rainham drew back with a gesture of abnegation, as the driver reined the horse back upon its haunches with a clatter. "I'm going to walk, I think. Only up to Bloomsbury, you know. Good-night, Dick. I hope you'll be very happy, both of you."