“I rather like him,” said Denis.  “He knows what he wants.”

“That is not enough, my young friend!” replied Marten with decision.  “A fellow must want something sensible.”

“What do you call sensible?”

“Sanidin, and things like that.  Things with pretty names.  Eh, Phipps?”

Denis said nothing.

His friend continued jovially: 

“The tavern mood is upon me.  I am going to Luisella’s to get a drink.  One gets sick of that Club.  Besides, I’ve taken rather a fancy to that younger sister.  The second youngest, I mean; the one with the curly hair—­you know!  I only wish I knew a bit more Latin.”

Luisella’s grotto-tavern had become quite a famous rendezvous.  You could drop in there at any hour and always find company to your liking.  Don Francesco had a good deal to do with its discovery; he discovered, at all events, the second eldest of the four orphan sisters who managed the house.  After a time, having convinced himself that they were all good penitents and being a kindly sort of man, he thought that other people might like to share in the seductions which the place afforded.  He took foreign friends there from time to time, and none were disappointed.  The wine was excellent.  Russians, excluded from the Club by Mr. Parker’s severity, frequented the spot in considerable numbers.  They were nicely treated there.  Not many nights previously one of the Master’s disciples, the athletic young Peter Krasnojabkin, who was credited with being a protege of Madame Steynlin’s, had distinguished himself by drinking sixteen bottles at a sitting.  He afterwards smashed a few chairs and things, for which he apologized so prettily next morning that the girls would not hear of his paying for the damage.

“It’s all in the family,” they said.  “Come and break some more!”

That was the way they ran the place, as regards drinks.  The quality of the refreshments, too, was quite out of the common.  As for the girls themselves—­their admirers were legion.  They could have married anyone they pleased, had it not been more in accordance with the interests of their business, to say nothing of the personal inclinations, to have only lovers.

As Marten disappeared under that hospitable doorway, I flashed through the mind of Denis that Eames was a confirmed recluse; he might not like being disturbed in the morning.

Besides, he was probably at work.

He thought of going to see the bishop.  There was a glamour in the name.  To be a bishop!  His mother had sometimes suggested the Church, or at least politics as a career for him, if poetry should fail.  But this one was so matter-of-fact and unpretentious in his clothing, his opinions.  A broken-down matrimonial agent, Don Francesco had called him.  Mr. Heard was not his idea of a shepherd of souls; he was only a colonial, anyhow.  A grey type of man—­nothing purple about him, nothing glowing or ornate.  He did not get on particularly well with him either.