"'Hallo!' Caffyn turned about and came strolling back. He is a long lantern-jawed lad with a sardonic drawl of speech. He has spent two years in the _ville lumiere_, having come to it moth-like from somewhere afar in Texas. His ambition--no, wait!--the ambition of his father, a 'cattle king,' is that he should acquire the difficult art of painting in oils. 'Want me?' asked Caffyn, as I pushed a chair for him. 'What for? If it's to admire the 'rainbow' you've been mixing, I'm a connoisseur and I don't pass it. Your hand's steady enough, one or two lines admirably defined, but you've gotten the pink noyau and the _parfait amour_ into their wrong billets. If, on the other hand, you want me to drink it, I'll see you to hell first." . . . Then, as I introduced him, "Good evening, Mr. Farrell. I am pleased to meet you in this meretricious haunt of gaiety. If I may be allowed to say so, you set it off, sir.' "'Sit down a moment,' said I. 'We didn't intrude upon your solitary table, thinking--' "'I know,' he caught me up. 'Natural delicacy of Britishers-- 'Here's a fellow learning to take his pleasures sadly. We'll give him time.' And I, gentlemen, allowed that it was 'way down in Cupid's garden--Damon and Pythias discovered hand in hand--no gooseberries, by request. . . . If you'd like to be told how I was occupied, I was chewing--ay, marry and go to-- I was one with my distant father's most fatted calf--fed up and chewing.' "'And if you'd like to know how we were occupied,' said I, 'we were both wanting something--and the same thing. We haven't told one another what it is, and you are called in to guess.'