Halcyon days were they for Quixtus, for whom London wore an entirely different aspect from the Aceldama he had left. Instead of its streets and squares stretching out before him as the scene of potential devilry, it smiled upon him as the centre of manifold pleasant interests. He had the great work to attack, the final picture that mortal knowledge could draw of that far off, haunting phase of human life before the startling use of iron was known to mankind. It was not to be a dull catalogue of dead things. The dead things, a million facts, were to be the skeleton on which he would build his great vivid flesh-and-blood story—the dream of his life, which only now did he feel the vital impulse to realise. He had his club and his cronies, harmless folk, beneath whose mild exterior he no longer divined horrible corruption. From them all he received congratulations on his altered mien. The change had done him good. He was looking ten years younger. Some chaffed him, after the way of men. Wonderful place, Paris. He found a stimulating interest in his new responsibilities. Vestiges of his perfunctory legal training remained and enabled him to unravel simple complications in the Hammersley affairs, much to Clementina’s admiration and his own satisfaction. He discovered a pleasure once more in the occasional society of Tommy, and concerned himself seriously with his love-making and his painting. He spoke of him to Dawkins, the rich donor of the Anthropological Society portrait, to whom Tommy had alluded with such disrespect to Clementina. Dawkins visited Tommy’s studio and walked away with a couple of pictures, after having paid such a price as to make the young man regard him as a fairy godfather in vast white waistcoat and baggy trousers. Quixtus also entertained Tommy and Etta at lunch at the Carlton, Mrs. Fontaine completing the quartette. “I should have liked it better,” said Clementina, when she heard of the incident (as she heard all that happened to the lovers), “I should have liked it better if he hadn’t brought Mrs. Fontaine into it.” Whereat Tommy winked at Etta, unbeknown to Clementina.