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“For an apostle of beauty to write his evangel on,” I agreed, “it is a little inappropriate, except as an awful warning.”

Paul colored. “Well, but, my dear fellow, I’d no idea how much a table of this kind costs. I find I can’t get anything decent–the plainest mahogany–under a hundred and fifty.” He hung his head, and pretended not to notice that I was taking out my own cigar.

“Well, what’s a hundred and fifty to you?” I rejoined. “You talk as if you had to live on a book-keeper’s salary, with a large family to support.”

He smiled nervously and twirled the ring on his thin finger. “I know–I know–that’s all very well. But for twenty tables that I don’t buy I can send some fellow abroad and unseal his eyes.”

“Oh, hang it, do both!” I exclaimed impatiently; but the writing-table was never bought. The library remained as it was, and so did the contention between Halidon and myself, as to whether this inconsistent acceptance of his surroundings was due, on our friend’s part, to a congenital inability to put his hand in his pocket, or to a real unconsciousness of the ugliness that happened to fall inside his point of vision.

“But he owned that the table was ugly,” I agreed.

“Yes, but not till you’d called his attention to the fact; and I’ll wager he became unconscious of it again as soon as your back was turned.”

“Not before he’d had time to look at a lot of others, and make up his mind that he couldn’t afford to buy one.”

“That was just his excuse. He’d rather be thought mean than insensible to ugliness. But the truth is that he doesn’t mind the table and is used to it. He knows his way about the drawers.”

“But he could get another with the same number of drawers.”

“Too much trouble,” argued Halidon.

“Too much money,” I persisted.

“Oh, hang it, now, if he were mean would he have founded three travelling scholarships and be planning this big Academy of Arts?”

“Well, he’s mean to himself, at any rate.”

“Yes; and magnificently, royally generous to all the world besides!” Halidon exclaimed with one of his great flushes of enthusiasm.

But if, on the whole, the last word remained with Halidon, and Ambrose’s personal chariness seemed a trifling foible compared to his altruistic breadth of intention, yet neither of us could help observing, as time went on, that the habit of thrift was beginning to impede the execution of his schemes of art-philanthropy. The three travelling scholarships had been founded in the first blaze of his ardour, and before the personal management of his property had awakened in him the sleeping instincts of parsimony. But as his capital accumulated, and problems of investment and considerations of interest began to encroach upon his visionary hours, we saw a gradual arrest in the practical development of his plan.

“For every thousand dollars he talks of spending on his work, I believe he knocks off a cigar, or buys one less newspaper,” Halidon grumbled affectionately; “but after all,” he went on, with one of the quick revivals of optimism that gave a perpetual freshness to his spirit, “after all, it makes one admire him all the more when one sees such a nature condemned to be at war with the petty inherited instinct of greed.”

Still, I could see it was a disappointment to Halidon that the great project of the Academy of Arts should languish on paper long after all its details had been discussed and settled to the satisfaction of the projector, and of the expert advisers he had called in council.

“He’s quite right to do nothing in a hurry–to take advice and compare ideas and points of view–to collect and classify his material in advance,” Halidon argued, in answer to a taunt of mine about Paul’s perpetually reiterated plea that he was still waiting for So-and-so’s report; “but now that the plan’s mature–and such a plan! You’ll grant it’s magnificent?–I should think he’d burn to see it carried out, instead of pottering over it till his enthusiasm cools and the whole business turns stale on his hands.”