'I'm always seeing your name in the papers.

You have a great reputation, and I don't expect the Academy matters to your _clientele_.' Fenwick shook his head.

'I haven't sold a picture for more than a year--except a beastly portrait--one of the worst things I ever did.' 'That's bad,' said Watson.

'Of course that's my state--perennially! But you're not used to it.' Fenwick said nothing, and the delicate sensibility of the other instantly divined that, friends as they were, the comparison with himself had not been at all welcome to his companion.

And, indeed, at the time when Watson left England to begin the wandering life he had been leading for some three years, it would have been nothing less than grotesque.