was of an incomparably rarer quality. To define it
would be, of course, impossible, but I might perhaps call it poetic
fancy suddenly stimulated at moments by animal spirits into rapid
movements--so rapid, indeed, that what in slower movement would be
merely fancy, in him became wit. Beneath the coruscations of this wit
a rare and deep intellect was always perceptible.

His humour was also so fanciful that it seemed poetry at play, but
here was the remarkable thing: although he was not unconscious of his
other gifts, he did not seem to be in the least aware that he was a
humourist of the first order; every _jeu d'esprit_ seemed to leap
from him involuntarily, like the spray from a fountain. A dull man
like myself must not attempt to reproduce these qualities here.

While he was talking he kept on painting, and I said to him, 'I can't
understand how you can keep up a conversation while you are at work.'

I took care not to tell him that I was an amateur painter.

'It is only when the work that I am on is in some degree mechanical
that I can talk while at work. These flowers, which were brought to
me this morning for my use in painting this picture, will very soon
wither, and I can put them into the picture without being disturbed
by talk; but if I were at work upon this face, if I were putting
dramatic expression into these eyes, I should have to be silent.'

He then went on talking upon art and poetry, letting fall at every
moment gems of criticism that would have made the fortune of a critic.

After a while, however, he threw down the brush and said,

'Sometimes I can paint with another man in the studio; sometimes I
can't.'

I rose to go.

'No, no,' he said; 'I don't want you to go, yet I don't like keeping
you in this musty studio on such a morning. Suppose we take a stroll
together.'

'But you never walk out in the daytime.'

'Not often; indeed, I may say never, unless it is to go to the Zoo,
or to Jamrach's, which I do about once in three months.'

'Jamrach's!' I said. 'Why, he's the importer of animals, isn't he? Of
all places in London that is the one I should most like to see.' He
then took me into a long panelled room with bay windows looking over
the Thames, furnished with remarkable Chinese chairs and tables. And
then we left the house.

In Maud Street a hansom passed us; D'Arcy hailed it.

'We will take this to the Bank,' said he, 'and then walk through the
East End to Jamrach's. Jump in.'