“Not philosophic, eh?” Marsden inquired, picking up a chicken bone.

“Highly unphilosophic,” said Romarin, shaking his head.

“Hm!” grunted Marsden, stripping the bone...  “Well, I grant it pays in a different way.”

“It does pay, then?” Romarin asked.

“Oh yes, it pays.”

The restaurant had filled up.  It was one frequented by young artists, musicians, journalists and the clingers to the rather frayed fringes of the Arts.  From time to time heads were turned to look at Romarin’s portly and handsome figure, which the Press, the Regent Street photographic establishments, and the Academy Supplements had made well known.  The plump young Frenchwoman within the glazed cash office near the door, at whom Marsden had several times glanced in a way at which Romarin had frowned, was aware of the honour done the restaurant; and several times the blond-bearded proprietor had advanced and inquired with concern whether the dinner and the service was to the liking of M’sieu.

And the eyes that were turned to Romarin plainly wondered who the scallawag dining with him might be.

Since Romarin had chosen that their conversation should be of the old days, and without picking and choosing, Marsden was quite willing that it should be so.  Again he was casting the bullets of bread into his mouth, and again Romarin was conscious of irritation.  Marsden, too, noticed it; but in awaiting the roti he still continued to roll and bolt the pellets, washing them down with gulps of whiskey and soda.

“Oh yes, it paid,” he resumed.  “Not in that way, of course—­” he indicated the head, quickly turned away again, of an aureoled youngster with a large bunch of black satin tie, “—­not in admiration of that sort, but in other ways—­”

“Tell me about it.”

“Certainly, if you want it.  But you’re my host.  Won’t you let me hear your side of it all first?”

“But I thought you said you knew that—­had followed my career?”

“So I have.  It’s not your list of honours and degrees; let me see, what are you?  R.A., D.C.L., Doctor of Literature, whatever that means, and Professor of this, that, and the other, and not at the end of it yet.  I know all that.  I don’t say you haven’t earned it; I admire your painting; but it’s not that.  I want to know what it feels like to be up there where you are.”

It was a childish question, and Romarin felt foolish in trying to answer it.  Such things were the things the adoring aureoled youngster a table or two away would have liked to ask.  Romarin recognised in Marsden the old craving for sensation; it was part of the theoretical creed Marsden had made for himself, of doing things, not for their own sakes, but in order that he might have done them.  Of course, it had appeared to a fellow like that, that Romarin himself had always had a calculated end in view; he had not; Marsden merely measured Romarin’s peck out of his own bushel.  It had been Marsden who, in self-consciously seeking his own life, had lost it, and Romarin was more than a little inclined to suspect that the vehemence with which he protested that he had not lost it was precisely the measure of the loss.