might have been thought he disliked being talked to about his own
work. Welby accordingly changed the subject at once; he returned to
the picture he had been pressing on Lord Findon.

'Haven't you seen it? You really should.' But this elicited even less
response. Fenwick glared at him--apparently tongue-tied. Then Madame
de Pastourelles and her neighbour talked to each other, endeavouring
to draw in the stranger. In vain. They fell back, naturally, into
the talk of intimates, implying a thousand common memories and
experiences; and Fenwick found himself left alone.

His mind burned with annoyance and self-disgust. Why did he let these
people intimidate him? Why was he so ridiculously self-conscious?--so
incapable of holding his own? He knew all about Arthur Welby; his name
and fame were in all the studios. The author of the picture of the
year--in the opinion, at least, of the cultivated minority for whom
rails and policemen were not the final arbiters of merit; glorified in
the speeches at the Academy banquet; and already overwhelmed with more
commissions than he could take--Welby should have been one of the
best hated of men. On the contrary, his mere temperament had drawn
the teeth of that wild beast, Success. Well-born, rich, a social
favourite, trained in Paris and Italy, an archaeologist and student as
well as a painter, he commanded the world as he pleased. Society asked
him to dinners, and he gave himself no professional airs and went
when he could. But among his fellows he lived a happy comrade's life,
spending his gifts and his knowledge without reserve, always ready to
help a man in a tight place, to praise a friend's picture, to take up
a friend's quarrel. He took his talent and his good-fortune so simply
that the world must needs insist upon them, instead of contesting
them.