A Comedy of Masks by Ernest Dowson — Read

During the long, hot August, which variously dispersed the rest of their acquaintances, the intimacy of that ill-assorted couple, the bird of passage Rainham, and Oswyn the artist, was able to ripen. They met occasionally at Brodonowski's, of which dingy restaurant they had now almost a monopoly; for its artistic session had been prorogued, and the "boys" were scattered, departing one by one, as their purses and inclinations prompted, to resume acquaintance with their favourite "bits" in Cornwall, or among the orchards and moors of Brittany, to study mountains in sad Merioneth, or to paint ocean rollers and Irish peasants in ultimate Galway. On the occasion of their second meeting, Rainham having (a trifle diffidently, for the painter was not a questionable man) evinced a curiosity as to his summer movements, Oswyn had scornfully repudiated such a notion.

"Thank God! " he cried, "I have outworn that mania of searching for prettiness. London is big enough for me. My work is here, and the studies I want are here, and here I stay till the end of all things. I hate the tame country faces, the aggressive stillness and the silent noise, the sentiment and the sheep of it. Give me the streets and the yellow gas, the roar of the City, smoke, haggard faces, flaming omnibuses, parched London, and the river rolling oilily by the embankment like Styx at night when the lamps shine."