"You take a long time to recognise an old friend," he observed at length, blowing a thin wreath of smoke.
"Friend," echoed Nestley, with a deep sigh, recovering himself. "Yes, you were my friend, Basil Beaumont."
"Why 'were'?" asked the artist coolly.
"Because it was you who so nearly ruined my life," replied Nestley in a deep voice.
Beaumont smiled in a saturnine manner.
"I," he said in a gibing tone. "My good fellow you do me too much honour. I would never dare to ruin so celebrated an individual as Duncan Nestley, F.R.C.S., and deuce knows what other letters of the alphabet."
The pedestrian turned on him fiercely, and, stepping forward, confronted him with clenched fists. The artist never blenched, but eyed his angry antagonist steadily. So Nestley, with all the wrath dying out of his face, fell back into his former position with a dreary laugh.
"You have the one virtue of a scoundrel, I see," he said bitterly. "Courage."
"Man of one virtue and ten thousand crimes," quoted Beaumont, easily. "Faith, it's something to have even one virtue in this degenerate age. Where are you going?" he added, as Nestley turned away.
"Going?" echoed the doctor, fiercely. "Anywhere, so long as it is away from you."