“How did you find that out?”
“By a careful study of Hell and its inhabitants.”
“Then you don’t mean the Hell one’s people talk about?”
“No. I mean here and now, the world as it is. I’m not interested in any other.”
“Neither am I. Hurray!”
This conversation was the first of many. Haslam used to wait for Serge and walk with him as far as their roads lay together. He was an ambitious young man with his eyes set on the road to London, not so much because he was eager for fame and material rewards as because he was hotly impatient of art which stopped short at Benskin and Beecroft.
“But,” Serge would say, “Benskin and Beecroft will both die.”
“I know, but there’ll be a new Beecroft and a new Benskin by that time.”
“That’s true. We shall never be rid of them.”