d to commit myself. Shoost let me
take a look round, vill you?"

"With the greatest pleasure--and I'll give another shout for the coal."

Stanwell went out on the landing, and Mr. Shepson, left to himself,
began a meditative progress about the room. On an easel facing the
improvised dais stood a canvas on which a young woman's head had been
blocked in. It was just in that happy state of semi-evocation when a
picture seems to detach itself from the grossness of its medium and
live a wondrous moment in the actual; and the quality of the head in
question--a vigorous dusky youthfulness, a kind of virgin majesty--lent
itself to this illusion of vitality. Stanwell, who had re-entered the
studio, could not help drawing a sharp breath as he saw the
picture-dealer pausing with tilted head before this portrait: it
seemed, at one moment, so impossible that he should not be struck with
it, at the next so incredible that he should be.

Shepson cocked his parrot-eye at the canvas with a desultory "Vat's
dat?" which sent a twinge through the young man.

"That? Oh--a sketch of a young lady," stammered Stanwell, flushing at
the imbecility of his reply. "It's Miss Arran, you know," he added,
"the sister of my neighbour here, the sculptor."

"Sgulpture? There's no market for modern sgulpture except tombstones,"
said Shepson disparagingly, passing on as if he included the sister's
portrait in his condemnation of her brother's trade.

Stanwell smiled, but more at himself than Shepson. How could he ever
have supposed that the gross fool would see anything in his sketch of
Kate Arran? He stood aside, straining after detachment, while the
dealer continued his round of exploration, waddling up to the canvases
on the walls, prodding with his stick at those stacked in corners,
prying and peering sideways like a great bird rummaging for seed. He
seemed to find little nutriment in the course of his search, for the
sounds he emitted expressed a weary distaste for misdirected effort,
and he completed his round without having thought it worth while to
draw a single canvas from its obscurity.

As his visits always had the same result, Stanwell was reduced to
wondering why he had come again; but Shepson was not the man to indulge
in vague roamings through the field of art, and it was safe to conclude
that his purpose would in due course reveal itself. His tour brought
him at length face to face with the painter, where he paused, clasping
his plu