helsea, and
for a short distance pursues a course as respectable as the early career
of Mr. Walkingshaw. Then, not unlike that gentleman, it diverges at
right angles; and having once begun, goes on doubling for the remainder
of its existence, shedding, as it gets round each corner, the more
orthodox houses that once bore it company, till at last it becomes a
mere devious lane, the haunt of low eccentric buildings; in places,
owing to a casual tree or two, positively shady. The eccentric
buildings, one is not greatly surprised to hear, are nothing more
decorous than the studios of Bohemian painters. Such are the dangers of
deviating from a straight and adequately lamp-lit route.

In one of these studios a young man fiercely painted. His powerful,
loosely clad figure stepped nervously back and forward, his brush
now poised trembling in the air, now dabbing and swishing on the
long-suffering canvas. His mop of brown hair had started the day brushed
back and comparatively sleek; it was now a mere tousel. His butterfly
tie had been a thing of some esthetic pretensions; it was become a
tangle of silk. His smile had been bland and his manner courteous; he
now resembled a buffalo with a bullet in it.

"The beastly thing won't come right!" he roared.

Another young man reclined upon a deck-chair in company with three
cushions. His appearance was equally artistic, but he seemed less
strenuous. He was pale, slim, rather pretty than handsome, and
engagingly polite.

"Cheer up, dear old fellow," he suggested.

"Damn!" muttered Lucas.

He toiled in agitated silence for some minutes, and then burst out
again.

"No one will ever exhibit the thing; no one will ever look twice at it;
there's not a fool big enough in England to buy it! And it's all but the
best bit of work I've ever done."

"That 'all but' lets you down, I suppose," observed the other gently.

"One could fill a lunatic asylum with you alone," replied the painter.
"Why don't you go off and do some work instead of exhibiting your
incompetence here?"

"I told you I'd a headache," said the young man in the chair languidly.

"What the devil's in your head to ache beats me," declared Lucas,
accompanying this unkind speech by a brutal onslaught on the canvas.

"Dear Lucas!" smiled his friend. "You seem to have come under some
softening influence lately. Can you be in love?"

The painter turned and confronted him with a less furious air.

"You know I am," he rep