Quin studied the end of his cigarette.
"That ain't so good as it sounds," he said. "Sometimes I think I'd amounted to more if I had somebody that belonged to me."
"Isn't it rather early in the season for a young man's fancy to be lightly turning——"
The quotation was lost upon Quin, but the twinkle in the speaker's expressive eye was not.
"I didn't mean that," he laughingly protested; "I mean a mother or a sister or somebody like that, who would be a kind of anchor. Take Cass, for instance; he's steady as a rock."
"Ah! Cassius! One in ten thousand. From the time he was twelve he has shared with me the financial burden. An artist, Sergeant Graham, must remain aloof from the market-place. Now that I have retired permanently from the stage in order to devote my time exclusively to writing, my only business engagement is a series of lectures at the university, where, as you know, I occupy the chair of Dramatic Literature."
The chair thus euphemistically referred to was scarcely more than a three-legged stool, which he occupied four mornings in the week, the rest of his time being spent at home in the arduous task of writing tragedies in blank verse.
"What I got to think about is a job," said Quin, much more interested in his own affairs than in those of his host.
"Commercial or professional?" inquired Mr. Martel.
"Oh, I can turn my hand to 'most anything," bragged Quin, blowing smoke-rings at the ceiling. "It's experience that counts, and, believe me, I've had a plenty."