"No, thank you. _Aut Caesar aut nihil_. You remember what I always used to say: 'Either Beethoven----' (The spaniel pricked up his ears.) --or bust.' If I could not be a great musician it was hardly worth while enduring the privations of one, especially at another man's expense. So I did the Prodigal Son dodge, as you know, and out of the proceeds sent you my year's exes in that cheque you with your damnable pride sent me back again. And now, old fellow, that I have you face to face at last, can you offer the faintest scintilla of a shadow of a reason for refusing to take that cheque? No, you can't! Nothing but simple beastly stuckuppishness. I saw through you at once; all your heroics were a fraud. I was not your friend, but your protege--something to practise your chivalry on. You dropped your cloak, and I saw your feet of clay. Well, I tell you straight, I made up my mind at once to be bad friends with you for life; only when I saw your fiery old phiz at Brahmson's I felt a sort of something tugging inside my greatcoat like a thief after my pocket-book, and I kinder knew, as the Americans say, that in half an hour I should be sitting beneath your hospitable roof." "I beg your pardon--you will have some whisky." He rang the bell violently. "Don't be a fool--you know I didn't mean that. Well, don't let us quarrel. I have forgiven you for your youthful bounty, and you have forgiven me for chucking it up; and now we are going to drink to the _Vaterland_," he added, as Mary Ann appeared with a suspicious alacrity. "Do you know," he went on, when they had taken the first sip of renewed amity dissolved in whisky, "I think I showed more musical soul than you in refusing to trammel my inspiration with the dull rules invented by fools. I suppose you have mastered them all, eh?" He picked up some sheets of manuscript. "Great Scot! How you must have schooled yourself to scribble all this--you, with your restless nature--full scores, too! I hope you don't offer this sort of thing to Brahmson." "I certainly went there with that intention," admitted Lancelot. "I thought I'd catch Brahmson himself in the evening--he's never in when I call in the morning." Peter groaned. "Quixotic as ever! You can't have been long in London then?" "A year." "I suppose you'd jump down my throat if I were to ask you how much is left of that----" he hesitated, then turned the sentence facetiously--"of those twenty thousand shillings you were cut off with?" "Let this vile den answer." "Don't disparage the den; it's not so bad." "You are right--I may come to worse. I've been an awful ass. You know how lucky I was while at the Conservatoire--no, you don't. How should you? Well, I carried off some distinctions and a lot of conceit, and came over here thinking Europe would be at my feet in a month. I was only sorry my father died before I could twit him with my triumph. That's candid, isn't it?"