'You don't know what I may have been up to this summer.' Findon shrugged his shoulders.

'I know a wise man when I see him.

But the fools there are about! Well, I take a strong line'-- he waved his hand, with a kind of laughing pomposity, rolling his words--'whenever I see a young fellow marrying before he has got his training--before he has seen a foreign gallery--before he can be sure of a year's income ahead--above all, before he knows anything at all about _women_, and the different ways in which they can play the devil with you!--well, I give him up--I don't go to see his pictures--I don't bother about him any more.

The man's an ass--must be an ass!--let him bray his bray! Why, you remember Perry ?--Marindin ?' On which there followed a rattling catalogue of matrimonial failures in the artist world, amusing enough--perhaps a little cruel.

Cuningham laughed.