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She passed by the table at which they were sitting, and
he took her arm.
‘Come and sit by my side, dear child, and let us play the
divine comedy of love.’
‘Fichez-moi la paix,’ she said, and pushing him on one
side continued her perambulation.
‘Art,’ he continued, with a wave of the hand, ‘is merely
the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they
were supplied with food and women, to escape the tedious-
ness of life.’
Cronshaw filled his glass again, and began to talk at
length. He spoke with rotund delivery. He chose his words
carefully. He mingled wisdom and nonsense in the most
astounding manner, gravely making fun of his hearers at
one moment, and at the next playfully giving them sound
advice. He talked of art, and literature, and life. He was by
turns devout and obscene, merry and lachrymose. He grew
remarkably drunk, and then he began to recite poetry, his
own and Milton’s, his own and Shelley’s, his own and Kit
Marlowe’s.
At last Lawson, exhausted, got up to go home.
‘I shall go too,’ said Philip.
Clutton, the most silent of them all, remained behind
listening, with a sardonic smile on his lips, to Cronshaw’s
maunderings. Lawson accompanied Philip to his hotel and
then bade him good-night. But when Philip got to bed he
could not sleep. All these new ideas that had been flung
before him carelessly seethed in his brain. He was tremen-
dously excited. He felt in himself great powers. He had never

10 Of Human Bondage