."
I began the ascent of boxed wooden stairways, musty with the odors of
ships' cargoes. At the top a sign confronted me, "No Admittance Except
on Business. This means You"; but beneath it in red, white, and blue
paint, was the message, "Used for Storage. New Studio at 43 Barkiston
Avenue."

I knocked. There was no answer. I tried the stump of a knob; the door
yielded. I found myself in a large room with rolls and rolls of canvas
in piles and huge scenic back drops pendant from the high ceiling. A
skylight above, with rotting curtains drawn across the square panes,
threw a strange green glare over everything. A peculiar aromatic odor,
such as is sometimes wafted over the footlights into the audience, gave
the deserted place a theatrical flavor which was heightened by the
presence of gilded papier-mache statuettes and a huge representation of
the god Buddha leaning against the bare brick wall. A spider had spun a
web above one of this god's bare shoulders; it glinted in a chance ray
of direct sunlight which had entered through a tear in the curtain
overhead. Above me a staging held a kitchen chair, some fire pails, and
several pots whose sides were smirched with the colors they contained.
The only sign of human life was the faint warm odor of pipe smoke.
Knowing, then, that some one beside myself was in the loft, I proceeded
gingerly between two vast canvases which hung side by side, preparing
myself on my soft-footed way down this aisle to see the man I sought as I
emerged from the other end. I imagined I heard a nervous, suppressed
cough, indicating that the other already knew of my invasion of his
strange abode.

This was not the fact. For a moment, looking from the opening, I had
ample opportunity, without being seen, to observe all that spread itself
before me. A painted drop hung against the wall, upon which, in delicate
colors of Italian blue and rich green, was stretched a vast, imposing,
and beautiful view of the Gardens of Versailles, with a wealth of
flowers in full bloom extending along the velvet greensward into the
depth of the landscape, where, white and regal, walls and pillars rose
toward the clear sky of spring. A modern grotesque had invaded this
regal scene and forbidden ground, and had placed his cot, disordered
with newspapers and ragged red blankets, so boldly in the foreground
that at first sight the impropriety of his presence was shocking. I
could see that the man sat upon his cot cross-legged