“Rex,” he began, “when I say that we are friends, I mean, for my own part, that you are more to me than any man alive; and now I am going to tell you my story. Don’t interrupt me. I have only just courage enough; if any of it oozes out, I may not be able to go on. Well, I have been through the mill. Clifford was right. They say it is a phase through which all men must pass. I say, must or not, if you pass through it you don’t come out without a stain. You’re never the same man after. Don’t imagine I mean that I was brutally dissolute. I don’t want you to think worse of me than I deserve. I kept a clean tongue in my head—always. So do you. I never got drunk—neither do you. I kept a distance between myself and the women whom those fellows were celebrating in song just now—so do you. How much is due in both of us to principle, and how much to fastidiousness, Rex? I found out for myself at last, and perhaps your turn will not be long in coming. After avoiding entanglements for just three years—” He looked at Rex, who dropped his head—“I gave in to a temptation as coarse, vulgar and silly as any I had ever despised. Why? Heaven knows. She was as vulgar a leech as ever fastened on a calf like myself. But I didn’t think so then. I was wildly in love with her. She said she was madly in love with me.” Braith made a grimace of such disgust that Rex would have laughed, only he saw in time that it was self-disgust which made Braith’s mouth look so set and hard. “I wanted to marry her. She wouldn’t marry me. I was not rich, but what she said was: ‘One hates one’s husband.’ When I say vulgar, I don’t mean she had vulgar manners. She was as pretty and trim and clever—as the rest of them. An artist, if he sees all that really exists, sometimes also sees things which have no existence at all. Of these were the qualities with which I invested her—the moral and mental correspondencies to her blonde skin and supple figure. She justified my perspicacity one day by leaving me for a loathsome little Jew. The last time I heard of her she had been turned out of a gambling hell in his company. His name is Emanuel Pick. Is not this a shabby romance? Is it not enough to make a self-respecting man hang his head—to know that he has once found pleasure in the society of the mistress of Mr Emanuel Pick?” A long silence followed, during which the two men smoked, looking in opposite directions. At last Braith reached over and shook the ashes out of his pipe. Rex lighted a fresh cigarette at the same time, and their eyes met with a look of mutual confidence and goodwill. Braith spoke again, firmly this time. “God keep you out of the mire, Rex; you’re all right thus far. But it is my solemn belief that an affair of that kind would be your ruin as an artist; as a man.” “The Quarter doesn’t regard things in that light,” said Gethryn, trying hard to laugh off the weight that oppressed him. “The Quarter is a law unto itself. Be a law unto yourself, Rex—Good night, old chap.”