Mr. Longdon wore for a minute the air of a man knowing but too well what it was to be asked to put down his name. “My friend Vanderbank swaggers so little that it’s rather from you than from himself that I seem to catch the idea--!” “Of his being a great figure among us? I don’t know what he may have said to you or have suppressed; but you can take it from me--as between ourselves, you know--that he’s very much the best of us. Old Van in fact--if you really want a candid opinion,” and Mitchy shone still brighter as he talked, “is formed for a distinctly higher sphere. I should go so far as to say that on our level he’s positively wasted.” “And are you very sure you’re not?” Mr. Longdon asked with a smile. “Dear no--I’m in my element. My element’s to grovel before Van. You’ve only to look at me, as you must already have made out, to see I’m everything dreadful that he isn’t. But you’ve seen him for yourself--I needn’t tell you!” Mitchy sighed. Mr. Longdon, as under the coercion of so much confidence, had stood in place longer than for any previous moment, and the spell continued for a minute after Mitchy had paused. Then nervously and abruptly he turned away, his friend watching him rather aimlessly wander. “Our host has spoken of you to me in high terms,” he said as he came back. “You’d have no fault to find with them.” Mitchy took it with his highest light. “I know from your taking the trouble to remember that, how much what I’ve said of him pleases and touches you. We’re a little sort of religion then, you and I; we’re an organisation of two, at any rate, and we can’t help ourselves. There--that’s settled.” He glanced at the clock on the chimney. “But what’s the matter with him?” “You gentlemen dress so much,” said Mr. Longdon. Mitchy met the explanation quite halfway. “_I_ try to look funny--but why should Apollo in person?” Mr. Longdon weighed it. “Do you think him like Apollo?” “The very image. Ask any of the women!” “But do _I_ know--?” “How Apollo must look?” Mitchy considered. “Why the way it works is that it’s just from Van’s appearance they get the tip, and that then, don’t you see? they’ve their term of comparison. Isn’t it what you call a vicious circle? I borrow a little their vice.” Mr. Longdon, who had once more been arrested, once more sidled away. Then he spoke from the other side of the expanse of a table covered with books for which the shelves had no space--covered with portfolios, with well-worn leather-cased boxes, with documents in neat piles. The place was a miscellany, yet not a litter, the picture of an admirable order. “If we’re a fond association of two, you and I, let me, accepting your idea, do what, this way, under a gentleman’s roof and while enjoying his hospitality, I should in ordinary circumstances think perhaps something of a breach.”