“It’s hard lines on us,” – Mrs. Lovatt was talking as she poured out tea – “and I expect Mrs. Tullis will feel sold if she comes: but it was good news for Pender. He got the telegram at lunch-time and just caught the two o’clock train. Some dealer from Paris wants to see him about a one man show there. I could hardly believe it, when he told me this would be the first, either in Paris or London. It seems too preposterous. But he says the money or the luck has always been wanting. That Pender should still be so hard up is a standing wonder to me. When I think of his things — There’s only one Pender. Don’t you agree?”

“I take it,” said Urquhart, “that he hasn’t practised the great art of self-advertisement.”

(Joanna moved impatiently in her chair. “I take it!” What a stilted way he had of speaking!)

“That’s it exactly!” responded Mildred with animation. “And not only that, but he has never troubled to hide his contempt for those who do practise it. They say he is the most unpopular artist among artists in London. There’s no doubt that something in his personality has stood in the way of his getting on. But it’s a sin all the same. To think of the prices his stuff will fetch the minute he’s dead! And I’ve no doubt the dealers are beginning to realize this. The brutes!”

“Would you guess,” she continued, handing a cup to Joanna, “that he was getting on for fifty? Forty-seven, he must be, at the very least. Would you think so?”

“I can never guess ages,” replied Joanna, as she had to reply, “but I shouldn’t have thought him so old.”

To her fifty was age, was worlds removed from herself. Her father, she knew, had been barely fifty when he died, and she had always thought of him as an old man.

Yet in connection with Louis Pender, the word fifty, remained meaningless. So far as she was concerned it had no bearing on him.

“Physically he may look younger, perhaps,” said Urquhart with calm unexpectedness, “but I, myself, should have put him down as older.”

Under the questioning looks of both the women, he was quite aware that he had blundered, but he persisted.

“I mean,” he said, “he looks to me so sick and tired of everything.”

“I think he looks very much younger than his age,” said Joanna displeased.

“So do I, I must say,” agreed Mildred, “though of course I know what you mean, Mr. Urquhart. He looks rather disillusioned. His marriage – ah well!” And she sighed, lifting her brows a little.

Presently she noticed that Joanna’s eyes had strayed questioningly to a pile of art magazines surmounted by a case tied with tapes, which lay on the sofa opposite beside Lawrence Urquhart.