It was an effort to talk to Hobson. For this effort a great bulk of nervous force was awoken. It got to work and wove its large anomalous patterns. It took the subject that was foremost in his existence and imposed it on their talk. * * * * * Tarr turned to Hobson, and seized him, conversationally, by the hair. “Well, Walt Whitman, when are you going to get your hair cut?” “Why do you call me Walt Whitman?” “Would you prefer Buffalo Bill? Or is it Shakespeare?” “It is not Shakespeare⸺” “‘Roi je ne suis: prince je ne daigne.’—That’s Hobson’s choice.—But why so much hair? I don’t wear my hair long. If you had as many reasons for wearing it long as I have, we should see it flowing round your ankles!” “I might ask you under those circumstances why you wear it short. But I expect you have good reasons for that, too. I can’t see why you should resent my innocent device. However long I wore it I should not damage you by my competition⸺” Tarr rattled the cement match-stand on the table, and the _garçon_ sang “Toute suite, toute suite!” “Hobson, you were telling me about a studio to let before you left.—I forget the details⸺” “Was it one behind the Panthéon?” “That’s it.—Was there electric light?” “No, I don’t think there was electric light. But I can find out for you.” “How did you come to hear of it?” “Through a German I know—Salle, Salla, or something.” “What was the street?” “The Rue Lhomond. I forget the number.” “I’ll go and have a look at it after lunch.—What on earth possesses you to know so many Germans?” Tarr asked, sighing. “Don’t you like Germans?—You’ve just been too intimate with one; that’s what it is.” “Perhaps I have.” “A female German.” “The sex weakens the ‘German,’ surely.” “Does it in Fräulein Lunken’s case?” “Oh, you know her, do you?—Of course, you would know her, as she’s a German.” Alan Hobson cackled morosely, like a very sad top-dog trying to imitate a rooster. Tarr’s unwieldy playfulness, might in the chequered northern shade, in conjunction with nut-brown ale, gazed at by some Rowlandson—he on the ultimate borders of the epoch—have pleased by its à propos. But when the last Rowlandson dies, the life, too, that he saw should vanish. Anything that survives the artist’s death is not life, but play-acting. This homely, thick-waisted affectation!—Hobson yawned and yawned as though he wished to swallow Tarr and have done with him. Tarr yawned more noisily, rattled his chair, sat up, haggard and stiff, as though he wished to frighten this crow away. “Carrion-Crow” was Tarr’s name for Hobson: “The olde Crow of Cairo,” rather longer. Why was he talking to this man? However, he shortly began to lay bare the secrets of his soul. Hobson opened: