"Did Mr Lambert know?" "Oh yes, but he wasn't uneasy; he said she was like a bad penny, sure to turn up all right." "Good God!" "What on earth!--why, there was no harm. Leavesley is the best of good fellows, he looked after her like a grandmother; he worships the very ground she walks on, and I'd pity the man who would as much as look twice at Fanny if he was with her." "Um--Mr Leavesley, as you call him----" "I don't call him, he calls himself." "Well, Mr Leavesley may be all right in his way, but I should not care to see a sister of mine worshipped by one of these sort of people. Organ-grinders and out-of-elbow artists may be delightful company amidst their own set, but I confess I am not accustomed to them----" "That's just your insular prejudice--seems to me I've heard that expression before, but it will do--Leavesley isn't an organ-grinder. I can't stand loafers myself, and if a man can't keep up with the procession, he'd better hang himself; but Leavesley isn't a loafer, and he'll be at the top of the procession yet, leading the elephant. Oh, he paints divinely!" "Miss Lambert, you say, is in love with him?" "I didn't--I fancy she had a weakness; but maybe it's only a fancy." "Does he write to her?" "Don't know--very likely; these artistic people can do things other people can't. We all went to see the Lamberts off at the Nord, and had champagne at the buffet; and poor old Fragonard--he was another worshipper, an artist you know--turned up with a huge big bouquet of violets for Fanny; we asked him where he'd got them, and he said he'd stolen them. They don't care a fig for poverty, artists; make a joke of it you know. Yes, I daresay he writes to Fanny. Heidenheimer writes to me every week--says he's dying in love with me, and sends poems, screechingly funny poems, all about nightingales and arrows and hearts. He's an artist too, and I'd marry him, I believe I would, only we're both as poor as Lazarus." "Mr Leavesley is an artist you say?" "Yes, but he's a genius, but genius doesn't pay--that's to say at first--afterwards--afterwards it's different. Trading rats for diamonds in famine time isn't in it with a genius when he gets on the make." Mr Bevan gazed reflectively at the tips of his shoes. He quite recognised that these long-haired and out-at-elbowed anomalies y'clept geniuses had the trick, at times, of making money. A dim sort of wrath against the whole species possessed him. To a clean, correct, and level-headed gentleman possessed of broad acres and a huge rent-roll, it is unpleasant to think that a slovenly, shiftless happy-go-lucky tatterdemallion may be a clean, correct and level-headed gentleman's, superior both in brains, fascination, and even in wealth. We can fancy the correct one subscribing sympathy, if not money, to a society for the extinction of genius, were not such a body entirely superfluous in the present condition of human affairs.