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Blair laughed with him, but after a moment Stacey became suddenly silent and gazed with a puzzled frown at his friend, wondering how it was that any one so physically frail as Blair could possess such creative masculine vigor of mind.

“How are you getting on, Phil?” he asked abruptly.

Blair shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, all right enough,” he answered lightly. “I scrape along without too much difficulty. It would be easier in one way if I were to go in with some firm, but—”

“Never do—for you, never in the world!” Stacey interrupted, shaking his head. “You’d feel crushed.”

“Yes, I’d rather go it on my own. I’m all right. Absolutely the only thing that bothers me is not getting enough jobs. I don’t mean because I need them financially, but because—you know how it is—to learn, a man has to see his work in actual stone and brick.”

“You’re too damned good!” said Stacey hotly. “You’ve got the real stuff in you. Here am I, prospering like a—like a pork packer, while you struggle along unappreciated; yet you’re a thousand times better than I.”