"Ah! A pity. I wanted some little thing for a wedding-present. No one I care about very much, so it must be a little thing." "He has two or three little things just now," said Logan. "If you sent a messenger-boy round to his studio he would let you see them." And suddenly Mendel could keep the game up no longer. He began to feel choked by the stuffy, empty luxury of the room, with its excess of plate and glass and flowers and furniture and pictures. His head seemed to be on the point of bursting. He must get out--out and away. He wanted to laugh, to scream with laughter, to shout, to die of laughter, anything to shake off the oppressive folly of his host. And he began to laugh, to shake and heave with it. He suppressed it, but at last he burst out with a roar and rushed from the room. "Overworked," said Logan imperturbably. "That's what it is. The poor devil hasn't learned sense yet. It's work, work, work with him, all the time. He thinks of nothing but his art, you know. Never has, ever since he was a boy. . . . He'll be a very great genius, and I shall be left far behind." "Not you," said Tysoe, "not you. I know no man in whom I have greater faith than you." "Do you think him as good as all that?" said Oliver eagerly. "I'm always telling him Kühler's not a patch on him." Meanwhile Mendel had taken refuge in the lavatory, where he shouted and shook and cried with laughter. When he had recovered himself he crawled back to the dining-room muttering inaudible apologies. "I'm sorry," he said. "I've not been myself lately." "You mustn't overdo it," said Tysoe kindly. "You have plenty of time. You need be in no hurry to overtake Logan. He is entering upon maturity. Your time will come." Mendel felt disturbed. He had not thought of Logan seriously as a painter, certainly not as a rival or a colleague. Logan was his friend. That Logan painted was incidental. It irritated him to have to sit and listen to him holding forth about painting. He had always liked Logan's talk, but had never really connected it with his work. It was just talk, like reading, or going to the cinema--a sop, a drug, soothing and pleasant when he was in the mood for it, maddening when he was not.