“You think so?” Campton half-sneered.
“Of course—why not? What are you painting? May I come and see?”
“Naturally.” Campton paused. “The fact is, I was bitten the other day with a desire to depict that little will-o’-the-wisp of a Mrs. Talkett. Come to her house any afternoon and I’ll show you the thing.”
“To her house?” Dastrey paused with a frown. “Then the picture’s finished?”
“No—not by a long way. I’m doing it there—in her milieu, among her crowd. It amuses me; they amuse me. When will you come?” He shot out the sentences like challenges; and his friend took them up in the same tone.
“To Mrs. Talkett’s—to meet her crowd? Thanks—I’m too much tied down by my job.”
“No; you’re not. You’re too disapproving,” said Campton quarrelsomely. “You think we’re all a lot of shirks, of drones, of international loafers—I don’t know what you call us. But I’m one of them, so whatever name you give them I must answer to. Well, I’ll tell you what they are, my dear fellow—and I’m not ashamed to be among them: they’re people who’ve resolutely, unanimously, unshakeably decided, for a certain number of hours each day, to forget the war, to ignore it, to live as if it were not and never had been, so that——”
“So that?”
“So that beauty shall not perish from the earth!” Campton shouted, bringing his stick down with a whack on the pavement.
Dastrey broke into a laugh. “Allons donc! Decided to forget the war? Why, bless your heart, they’ve never, not one of ’em, ever been able to remember it for an hour together; no, not from the first day, except as it interfered with their plans or cut down their amusements or increased their fortunes. You’re the only one of them, my dear chap, (since you class yourself among them) of whom what you’ve just said is true; and if you can forget the war while you’re at your work, so much the better for you and for us and for posterity; and I hope you’ll paint all Mrs. Talkett’s crowd, one after another. Though I doubt if they’re as good subjects now as when you caught them last July with the war-funk on.” He held out his hand with a dry smile. “Goodbye. I’m off to meet my nephew, who’s here on leave.”