"We've just been reading about you," said the other.
"Reading the most terrible things," said the poet.
"Shew him The Orb. The Orb's the best."
"No. Shew him The Planet. The one who says he ought to be prosecuted."
Roger, refusing Orb and Planet, shook hands with one of the ladies. She was a little actress, delicate, fragile, almost inhuman, with charm in all she did. She said that she had been reading his book of The Handful, and had found it very "interesting." She wanted Roger to come to tea, to talk over a scheme of hers. It dawned on Roger that she was saving him from his friends.
"You're the man of the moment," said the poet.
"Don't you pay any attention to any of them," said the painter who had first spoken. "You may be quite sure that when one has to say a thing in a hurry, as these critics must, one says the easiest thing, and the thing which comes handiest to say. If I paid attention to all they say about me I should be in a lunatic asylum. Besides, what does it matter what they say? Who are they, when all is said?"
The talk drifted into a wit combat, in which the seven set themselves to define a critic with the greatest possible pungency and precision. Having done this, to their own satisfaction, they set themselves to the making of a composite sonnet on the critic, upon the backs of bills of fare. One of the painters drew an ideal critic, in the manners, now of Tintoret, now of Velasquez, now of Watteau. The other, who complained that old masters ought to be ranked with critics, because they spoiled the market for living painters, drew him in the manner of Rops.
After dinner, Roger walked home by a roundabout road, which took him past his theatre. A few people hung about outside it, staring idly at a few others who were entering. His play was still running, it seemed, in spite of the trouble. Falempin was brave.
He walked back to his rooms, wondering why he had not gone to Ireland that night. London oppressed and pained him. He thought it an ugly city, full of ugly life. He was without any desire to be a citizen of such a city. He disliked the place and her people; but to-night, being, perhaps, a little humbled by his misfortunes, he found himself wondering whether all the squalor of the town, its beastly drinking dens, its mobs of brainless, inquisitive shouters, might not be changed suddenly to beauty and noble life by some sudden general inspiration, such as comes to nations at rare times under suffering. He decided against it. Patience under suffering was hardly one of our traits.