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to know people in London and went out to dinner a good
deal. They were all on excellent terms with themselves, for
Macalister had given them a good thing on the Stock Ex-
change, and Hayward and Lawson had made fifty pounds
apiece. It was a great thing for Lawson, who was extrava-
gant and earned little money: he had arrived at that stage
of the portrait-painter’s career when he was noticed a good
deal by the critics and found a number of aristocratic ladies
who were willing to allow him to paint them for nothing
(it advertised them both, and gave the great ladies quite an
air of patronesses of the arts); but he very seldom got hold
of the solid philistine who was ready to pay good money
for a portrait of his wife. Lawson was brimming over with
satisfaction.
‘It’s the most ripping way of making money that I’ve ever
struck,’ he cried. ‘I didn’t have to put my hand in my pocket
for sixpence.’
‘You lost something by not being here last Tuesday, young
man,’ said Macalister to Philip.
‘My God, why didn’t you write to me?’ said Philip. ‘If you
only knew how useful a hundred pounds would be to me.’
‘Oh, there wasn’t time for that. One has to be on the
spot. I heard of a good thing last Tuesday, and I asked these
fellows if they’d like to have a flutter, I bought them a thou-
sand shares on Wednesday morning, and there was a rise in
the afternoon so I sold them at once. I made fifty pounds for
each of them and a couple of hundred for myself.’
Philip was sick with envy. He had recently sold the last
mortgage in which his small fortune had been invested and

Of Human Bondage