"Then I dig out any old patches or restorations and fill in with a composition of putty, white lead, and a drier, and smooth this with a cork. Then when it is sunned for an hour a day for three weeks or more--or less, sometimes--I'm ready to grind my pure colours, mix them, set my palette, and do as honest a piece of restoring as a study of that particular master's methods permits. And that, Ledwith, is only a little part of my fascinating profession. "Sometimes I lift the entire skin of paint from a canvas--picking out the ancient threads from the rotten texture--and transfer it to a new canvas or panel. Sometimes I cross-saw a panel, then chisel to the plaster that lies beneath the painting, and so transfer it to a new and sound support. Sometimes--" he laughed--"but there are a hundred delicate and interesting surgical operations which I attempt--a thousand exciting problems to solve--experiments without end that tempt me, innovations that allure me----" He laughed again: "_You_ ought to take up some fad and make a business and even an art out of it!" "I?" said Ledwith, dully. "Why not? Man, you're young yet, if--if----" "Yes, I know, Quarren.... But my mind is too old--very old and very infirm--dying in me of age--the age that comes through those centuries of pain that men sometimes live through in a few months." Quarren looked at him hopelessly. "Yet," he said, "if only a man wills it, the world is new again." "But--if the will fails?" "I don't know, Ledwith." "I do." He drew up his cuff a little way, his dead eyes resting on Quarren, then, in silence, he drew the sleeve over the scars. "Even that can be cured," said the younger man. "If there is a will to cure it, perhaps." "Even a desire is enough." "I have not that desire. Why cure it?" "Because, Ledwith, you haven't gone your limit yet. There's more of life; and you're cheating yourself out of it." "Yes, perhaps. But what kind of life?" he asked, staring vaguely out into the sunshine of the backyard. "Life in hell has no attractions for me." "We make our own hells." "I didn't make mine. They dug the pit and I fell into it--Hell's own pit, Quarren----" "You are wrong! You fell into a pit which hurt so much that you supposed it was the pit of hell. And, taking it for granted, you burrowed deeper in blind fury, until it became a real hell. But _you_ dug it. There _is_ no hell that a man does not dig for himself!" In Ledwith's dull eyes a smouldering spark seemed to flash, go out, then glimmer palely. "Quarren," he said, "I am not going to live in hell alone. I'm going there, shortly, but not alone." Something new and sinister in his eyes arrested the other's attention. He considered the man for a few moments, then, coolly: "I wouldn't, Ledwith." "Why not?" "He isn't worth it--even as company in hell." "Do you think I'm going to let him live on?" "Do you care to sink to his level?" "Sink! Can I sink any lower than I am?" Quarren shrugged: