"Oh, it's much as usual--perhaps a little more so! Bullen continues to threaten me with bankruptcy, but I am getting used to it. Threatened men live long, you know." "Oh, you're all right!" answered Dick genially. "As long as Bullen looks after you, you won't come to grief." While the two were thus occupied in reuniting the chain of old associations, Oswyn had been silently, almost surreptitiously, preparing for departure; and he now came forward awkwardly, with his hat in one hand and the tools of his trade under his arm. "May I leave some of these things, here, or will they be in your way?" "But you're not going?" said Rainham, rising from his seat with a constraining gesture; "why, don't you remember we were going to dine together? Dick will stay too, _n'est ce pas_? It will be like old times. Mrs. Bullen has been preparing quite a feast, I assure you!" Oswyn paused irresolutely. "Don't let me drive you away," said Dick. "In any case I'm going myself in a few minutes. Yes," he added, turning to Rainham, "I'm very sorry, but I've got to take my wife out to dinner, and I shall have to catch a train in, let me see, about ten minutes." "Really? Well, then, clearly you must sit down again, Oswyn; I won't be left alone at any price. That's right. Now, Dick, tell me what you have been doing, and especially all about your Academy picture; I haven't seen even a critique of it. Of course it's a success? Have you sold it?" "Oh, spare my modesty!" protested Lightmark somewhat clumsily, with a quick glance at Oswyn. "It's all right, but we mustn't talk shop." "Yes, for God's sake spare his modesty!" supplemented the other painter almost brutally. "Look at his blushes. It isn't so bad as all that, Lightmark." "I don't even know the subject," pursued Rainham. "You might at least tell me what it was. Was it the canvas which you wouldn't show me, just before I went away--at the studio? The one about which you made such a mystery----?" "Oh bosh, old man!" interrupted Dick hurriedly, "I never made any mystery. It--it wasn't that. It's quite an ordinary subject, one of the river scenes which I sketched here. You had better go and see it. And come and see us. You know the address. I must be off!"