Mary Tufnell put him at his ease at once and encouraged him to talk about himself. He was frank and gay and amusing, and told her about his adventures and many of his troubles, and even ventured once or twice upon scabrous details. "He is a darling," she said to Edward. "But how he must have suffered. He is such a boy, but sometimes he seems to me the oldest person I have ever met." "You must remember that he is a Jew," said Edward. "He doesn't let you forget it," replied she. * * * * * The portrait was begun the next day. Mendel took a business-like view of his visit. He was there to paint and to make thirty pounds. Every moment that his hostess could spare he seized upon. He painted her in her mauve cotton and Leghorn hat and would not talk while he worked. When the light was gone he was ready for any entertainment they might propose. He did not find either of them particularly interesting, and their unfailing kindness wearied him not a little. They were so invariably good in every thought, word, and deed. It seemed impossible for them to fail. There was no combination of circumstances which they could not surmount with their smiling patience. . . . He thought of them as two people walking along on either side of a road, smiling across it at each other. Nothing joined them. They had never met. There had been no collision. He had overtaken her on the road and had taken her step, her pace. . . . They had just that air. Dear Edward had fallen in with her by the wayside, and she had smiled at him and he was content and held for life. To their mutual grave astonishment she would have children, and her smile would become a little sad, and with the children she would be an ideal to Edward, like the little Italian Madonnas of whom he had so many photographs all over the house. And between them on the road would march the brave procession of life--kings and beggars, priests and prostitutes, artists and peasants, chariots, and strange engines of peace and war; but they would see nothing of it: they would see only each other, and they would smile and go smiling to the grave. Mendel was at his ease with them and very happy, but suddenly out of nowhere there would arise, as it were, a great stench that pricked his nostrils and set him longing for London. And he would think of Logan and Oliver and ache to be with them, so that he knew that he was bound to them in the flesh. They were embarked upon a great adventure in which he must be with them to the end, for Logan was his friend, with whom he must share even the deepest bitterness. With Edward he could share nothing at all, for Edward was absurdly, incredibly innocent, content to smile by the wayside. He wrote to Logan and Oliver and told them how he was longing to be with them, and how the country filled him with childish fears, and how Paris seemed a thousand miles away and its adventures a thousand years ago. And he was hurt because they did not at once reply.