The dingy proprietor of the "Zingue" brought out the absinthe. Bakkus arranged the perforated spoon, carrying its lump of sugar over the glass and began to drop the water from the decanter. "If you will bear with me for a minute or two, until the sugar's melted, I'll tell you all about it." Chapter VII It was a successful combination. Bakkus sang his ballads and an occasional humorous song of the moment to Andrew's accompaniment on mandolin or one-stringed violin, and Andrew conjured and juggled comically, using Bakkus as his dull-witted foil. A complete little performance, the patter and business artistically thought out and perfectly rehearsed. They wore the conventional Pierrot costume with whited faces and black skull caps. Bakkus, familiar with English customs, had undertaken to attend to the business side of their establishment on the sands of the great West Coast resort, Andrew providing the capital out of his famous hundred louis. But it came almost imperceptibly to pass that Andrew made all the arrangements, drove the bargains and kept an accurate account of their varying finances. "You'll never be a soldier of fortune, my dear fellow," said Bakkus once, when, returning homewards, he had wished to dip his hand into the leather bag containing the day's takings in order to supply himself lavishly with comforting liquid. "It's the very last thing I want to be," replied Andrew, hugging the bag tight under his long arm. "You're bourgeois to your finger-tips, your ideal of happiness is a meek female in a parlour and half a dozen food-sodden brats." Andrew hunched his shoulders good-naturedly at the taunt. A home, and wife and offspring seemed rather desirable of attainment. "You've lots of money in your pocket to pay for a drink," said he. "It's mere perversity that makes you want to touch the takings. We haven't counted them." "Perversity is the only thing that makes this rotten life worth living," retorted Bakkus. It was his perversity, thus exemplified, which compelled Andrew to constitute himself the business manager of the firm. He had a sedate, inexorable way with him, a grotesque dignity, to which, for all his gibes, Bakkus instinctively submitted. Bakkus might provide ideas, but it was the lank and youthful Andrew who saw to their rigid execution. "You've no more soul than a Prussian drill sergeant," Bakkus would say. "And you've no more notion of business than a Swiss Admiral," Andrew would reply. "Who invented this elegant and disgustingly humiliating entertainment?"