Heriot could see that the cherished delusion gave him a melancholy pleasure, and was at a loss how to reply. "It was uphill work," he said at last. "Who can tell? Luck——"
"I was a lad, an impetuous lad; and I was handicapped—I married." The man with a failure to explain is always grateful to have married. "But I had the stuff in me, I had the temperament. 'Had' it? I have it now! I may keep an hotel, but I shall never be an hotel-keeper. God gave me my soul, sir; circumstances gave me an hotel. I mayn't paint any more, but an artist by nature I shall always be. I don't say it in any bragging spirit, Heriot; I should be happier if I didn't feel it. The commonplace man may be contented in the commonplace calling: he fills the rôle he was meant for. It's the poor devil like myself, who knows what he might have been, who suffers."
Heriot didn't pursue the subject; he puffed his cigar meditatively. After the effervescence subsides, such meetings must always have a little sadness; he looked at the wrinkles that had gathered on his friend's face, and realised the crow's-feet on his own.
"You lost your wife, you wrote me?" he remarked, breaking a rather lengthy silence.
"In New York, yes—pneumonia. You never married, eh?"
"No. Do you stay over here long?"
"A month or two; I can't manage more. But I shall leave my girl in London. I've brought her with me, and she'll remain."
"Of course," said Heriot, "you have a child—of course you have! I remember a little thing tumbling about in Howland Street. She must be a woman, Cheriton?"
"Mamie is twenty-one. I want to see if I can do anything for her before I go back. She loathes Duluth; and she has talent. She'll live with my sister. I don't think you ever saw my sister, did you? She's a widow, and stagnates in Wandsworth—Mamie will be company for her."
"Your daughter paints?"