Arthur was fortunate in finding a single seat vacant at a narrow table next the wall. Here he took his place, and had already proceeded halfway with his meal before he noticed a man who sat on the other side of the table. He was a cheerful little fellow, with a good face, humorous eyes, and mobile mouth, who was evidently itching for conversation. Some trifling courtesy of the table brought them acquainted, and in a few moments they were deep in talk. It seemed that he was an Englishman, a wandering artist, a man with a wide and cheerful acquaintance with vicissitude, who gave his name as Horner. He had been born and bred in London, in an atmosphere of lower middle-class insularity and ignorance, from which he had escaped into a wider world by the means of art-classes and night-schools. He had thus reached the lower slopes of Parnassus, only to discover that there his progress ended; he had neither the education nor the means to carry him farther; and so he had slowly declined from the production of original work into a kind of Ishmael hanging on the borders of the art-world, an expert restorer of old paintings, and at times an amateur dealer. It is a curious fact that the Englishman, who at home is the most reticent of all human animals, often becomes the most communicative when he meets men of his own nation abroad. There the freemasonry of race tells, loneliness acts as a solvent of reserve, and the possession of common memories invites immediate intimacy. To hear the familiar Cockney dialect again, with its clipped vowels and reckless distribution of the aspirate, to remark phrases heard nowhere save upon the London streets, is to be transported instantly, as on a magic carpet, to the atmosphere of home, to see again the glitter of the Strand, the midnight throngs in Piccadilly Circus, the dear and dingy purlieus of Soho. The very words have an esoteric significance; they cannot be heard or uttered save with a thrilling heart; and among banished Englishmen they are the symbols of an irrecoverable joy, and constitute an instant bond of brotherhood. Arthur listened with delight to Horner's narrative of his adventures. It appeared that he knew most of the millionaires who collected pictures, and nearly all the dealers from whom they bought them. In describing these people he had the rare art of the vitalising touch. The millionaires moved before the eye in all their eager ignorance, the dealers in all their duplicity and craft. Manufactories of old masters existed for the sole purpose of meeting the demand of American millionaires. It was a known fact that sixteen thousand Corots had passed the New York Customs House in the last few years, whereas every one knew that Corot could not have painted more than two thousand pictures in a long life of the most unremitting toil. "Why, I could paint better Corots myself than most of those that hang in American galleries," he remarked. "Perhaps you've done so," laughed Arthur.