Mendel introduced him to his friends and asked him to sit down.
“I can’t stop a moment,” said Mr. Sivwright. “I’m very busy. I have just started a club for artists—opens at eleven. These absurd closing hours, you know. I hope you’ll join. It has been open a week. Great fun, and I want some frescoes painted. . . . I’m very proud of your success, Kühler. I feel I had my hand in it.”
He produced a prospectus and laid it on the table, bowed awkwardly to Oliver, and with a self-conscious swagger, as though he felt the eyes of all in the café upon him, made his way out.
“Who’s that broken-down tick?” asked Logan.
“Sivwright,” answered Mendel. “He taught me when I was a boy. He’s a very bad artist, and he thinks art ended with Corot. I learned to paint like Corot. Really! I used to go with him to the Park and weep over the trees in the twilight: I never thought I should see him again.”
“Oh! people bob up,” said Logan. “We go on getting longer in the tooth, but people recur, like decimals.”
“Would you like to go to his club?” asked Mendel. “It says ‘Dancing.’ I feel like dancing.”
“Oh! I love dancing,” said she.
Logan assumed his air of mysterious importance and said it was time to go to Tysoe’s.
“We’re twenty minutes late,” he said; “Tysoe would be dreadfully put out if we were punctual.”