Turning at last to the one called D’Arcy, I said.  ’You are an artist; you are a painter?’

‘I have been trying for many years to paint,’ he said.

‘And you?’ I said, turning to his companion.

‘He is an artist too,’ D’Arcy said, ’but his line is not painting—­he is an artist in words.’

‘A poet?’ I said in amazement.

‘A romancer, the greatest one of his time unless it be old Dumas.’

‘A novelist?’

‘Yes, but he does not write his novels, he speaks them.’

De Castro, evidently with a desire to turn the conversation from himself and his profession, said, pointing to D’Arcy, ’You see before you the famous painter Haroun-al-Raschid, who has never been known to perambulate the streets of London except by night, and in me you see his faithful vizier.’

It soon became evident that D’Arcy, for some reason or other, had thoroughly taken to me—­more thoroughly, I thought, than De Castro seemed to like, for whenever D’Arcy seemed to be on the verge of asking me to call at his studio, De Castro would suddenly lead the conversation off into another channel by means of some amusing anecdote.  However, the painter was not to be defeated in his intention; indeed I noticed during the conversation that although D’Arcy yielded to the sophistries of his companion, he did so wilfully.  While he forced his mind, as it were, to accept these sophistries there seemed to be all the while in his consciousness a perception that sophistries they were.  He ended by giving me his address and inviting me to call upon him.

‘I am only making a brief stay in London,’ he said; ’I am working hard at a picture in the country, but business just now calls me to London for a short time.’

With this we parted at the door of the restaurant.

II

It was through the merest accident that I saw these two men again.

One evening I had been dining with my mother and aunt.  I think I may say that I had now become entirely reconciled to my mother.  I used to call upon her often, and at every call I could not but observe how dire was the struggle going on within her breast between pride and remorse.  She felt, and rightly felt, that the loss of Winifred among the Welsh hills had been due to her harshness in sending the stricken girl away from Raxton, to say nothing of her breaking her word with me after having promised to take my place and watch for the exposure of the cross by the wash of the tides until the danger was certainly past.

But against my aunt I cherished a stronger resentment every day.  She it was, with her inferior intellect and insect soul, who had in my childhood prejudiced my mother against me and in favour of Frank, because I showed signs of my descent from Fenella Stanley while Frank did not.  She it was who first planted in my mother’s mind the seeds of prejudice against Winnie as being the daughter of Tom Wynne.