As Mendel had plenty of money they took a taxi-cab.
Mr. Tilney Tysoe was an idealist, and he had no other profession. He was a very tall man with a long cadaverous face, great bulging, watery eyes, and extraordinarily long hands, which hung limply from his wrist, except when he was excited, when they shot up with extreme violence, and carried his arms with them into a gesture so awkward that he had to find relief from it in a shrug. He was devoted to the arts, had a stall at the opera, a study full of books, and several rooms full of pictures. An artist was to him a great artist, a book that pleased him was a great book, and his constant lament was over the dearth of great men in public life. It gave him the keenest delight to see Logan, unkempt, wild-haired, shaggy, violent and brusque, enter his daintily furnished drawing-room, and his eyes passed eagerly to Oliver, looking just as she ought to have done, the mistress of a Bohemian.
“Delighted! Delighted!” he said as he coiled his long white hand round Mendel’s workmanlike paw. “My wife, I regret to say, is away. She will be so sorry to have missed you. Like me, she is tired of the shallow, artificial people we live among. We both adore sincere, real people. I adore sincerity. Sincerity is genius.”
“That is true,” said Logan in a sepulchral voice that made Mendel jump. “At least, where you find sincerity, you may be sure that genius is not far behind.”
“I bought a picture of yours the other day, Mr. Kühler,” said Tysoe. “I am ashamed to think how little I gave for it, but works of art are priceless, are they not?”
“Mine are,” said Mendel, overcoming his disgust and beginning to enjoy the game.
“You think so,” rejoined Tysoe with an undulation of his long body. “And why shouldn’t you say so? You are sincere and strong. You must force your talent upon an ungrateful world.”
A man-servant announced dinner, and Tysoe gave his arm to Oliver and led her downstairs, while Logan put his hand on Mendel’s shoulder and said with a chuckle:—
“Be sincere.”
Mendel began at once with the soup, as though he had been wound up.