"I've just sold one," he said. "I came straight back from the exhibition and painted it. They sell just as if they were a new kind of toy that is all the rage." So they kept up a cheerful rattle of conversation until Clowes said she really must go. No; she would not have tea, but she hoped Mendel would come to tea with her one day. He saw her to the front door and ran upstairs again, three steps at a time. "Now, then," he said, "what have you come for, and why did you bring her?" "In case there was nothing to be said and this visit was another failure. I'm sick of failure; aren't you?" "I didn't answer your letter. I thought it was all over." "But I told you what had made me change." "It was nothing to do with that. Everything seemed all over, and I'm not sure even now that it isn't." "I knew something was happening to you. What is it?" "I've quarrelled with Logan." She was silent for a moment or two, and then she said:-- "I'm so glad." "You didn't like him. Why?" "I thought him second-rate." "He isn't that. He has a good mind, and he was a good friend." "Are you so sure of that?" "Of some things in him--of his affection, for instance--I am as sure as I am of myself." She smiled at him. "Yes. That is saying a good deal. But why did you quarrel?" "It was over his woman." "Oh yes!" "He has left her." "Has he been to see you?" "No. It was a friend of his. I don't know what will happen. They are bound to come together again. Perhaps they will go through life like that--parting and coming together again. I can't get it out of my head. I shall never forget it. It is like my father knocking a drunken soldier down with a glass. I never forget that, though it was different. That was just something that I saw. This is in my own life. I feel as though it had somehow happened through me. I was with him when he met her, you know, and his whole life changed when he met me. Perhaps he wasn't meant to take things seriously. . . . I didn't write to you because I didn't want to drag you into it. But I'm glad you've come. I'm glad you've come. . . . You know, it was beginning to be a horror with me that Logan would come in at that door, looking like a poor, battered, broken little Napoleon, and I should have to tell him that I was not his friend. . . . You know, he was something vital and living in my work, but Cézanne has kicked him out. He was only my friend really in my work, and if that goes everything goes. I couldn't explain it to him, for he wouldn't understand. He used to laugh at me for talking about my work to you. I'm afraid I told him more about you than I ought to have done, but, you see, he was my friend. He laughed at everything. He ought to have been a very happy man, the way he laughed at everything." He placed in her hands his reproduction of Cézanne's portrait of his wife. "That's better than Cranach," he said. "But why is her mouth crooked?" asked Morrison, puzzled by the picture and by his setting it above Cranach.