“My father is very well,” replied Sylvester, stiffly, “and so, I believe, is yours.”
“A la bonne heure! So you've come to London to make your fortune? You steady scientific files always do. We poor artistic devils generally manage to make other people's.”
“I don't quite understand,” said Sylvester.
The other laughed and drawing a cigarette from a silver case lit it daintily.
“I don't suppose you do. You approach a paradox as solemnly as if it were a disease. We play bat and ball with it. That makes the difference between us. Have a turn?”
Sylvester assented somewhat reluctantly. He disliked the son as much as he disliked the father. But the spirit of lonesomeness had been weighing on him to-day, and human instinct craved relief. They moved away and took their places in the sauntering procession on the broad walk.
“Why don't you do more of this sort of thing?” asked Roderick. “You treat life by rule of thumb, as if it were a science. It isn't; it's an art,—the finest of the Fine Arts. Colour, form, relief, action, sound, articulation, all combined, capable of a myriad permutations, any one of which can be fixed by the inspiration of the moment.”
“My way of life suits me best,” replied Sylvester. “I teach people how to kill bacilli; you teach them how to kill time.”
“Time's a deadlier enemy than all your bacilli, my friend, and takes a devilish sight more killing. But we won't argue. Argument is a discord in the symphony of existence. Besides, it's too confoundedly hot.”
Here he bowed in his grand style to a passing lady acquaintance.