w how to reach her. The existence of Mrs. Smith had dreadfully
complicated the mechanism of Number One. He ought to have made Barnes
get out of bed and fetch her. By good luck Michael saw from his window
the landlady standing at the top of the area steps. He ran out and asked
her to come and speak to him.

"I see," she said. "Mr. Barnes is to have your rooms, and you're paying
in advance up to February. Oh, and his coal and his gas as well? I see.
Well, that you can settle month by month. Through me? Oh, yes."

Mrs. Cleghorne was in a very good temper this morning. Michael could not
help wondering if Mrs. Smith had paid some arrears of her rent.

"Do you think Mr. Cleghorne would go and fetch me a hansom?" Michael
asked.

"He's still in his bed, but I'll go myself."

This cheerfulness was really extraordinary; and Michael was flattered.
Already he was beginning to feel some of the deference mixed with hate
which throughout the underworld was felt toward landladies. Her
condescension struck him with the sense of a peculiar favor, as if it
were being bestowed from a superior height.

Michael packed up his kitbags and turned for a last look at the white
rooms in Leppard Street. Suddenly it struck him that he would take with
him one or two of the pictures and present them to Maurice's studio in
Grosvenor Road. Mona Lisa should go there, and the Prince of Orange whom
himself was supposed to resemble slightly, and Don Baltazar on his big
horse. They should be the contribution which he had been intending for
some time to pay to that household. The cab was at the door, and
presently Michael drove away from Leppard Street.

As soon as he was in the hansom he felt he could begin to think of Lily
again, and though he knew that probably he was going to suffer a good
deal when they met, he nevertheless thought of her now with elation. It
had not seemed to be so sparkling a morning in Leppard Street; but
driving toward Maurice's studio along the banks of the river, Michael
thought it was the most crystalline morning he had ever known.

"I've brought you these pictures," he explained to Maurice, and let the
gift account for his own long disappearance from communion with his
friends. "They're pretty hackneyed, but I think it's rather good for you
to have a few hackneyed things amid the riot of originality here. What
are you doing, Mossy?"

"Well, I'm rather hoping to get a job as dramatic critic on The Point of
View."

"You