nctuality); and the loft was cheap, and suited me very well.
But, of course, a sculptor wants a big place on the ground floor; it's
slow work, that with blocks of stone and marble that cost you twenty
pounds every time you lift them; so Benlian had the studio. His name was
on a plate on the door, but I'd never seen him till this time I'm telling
you of.

I was working that evening at one of the prettiest little things I'd ever
done: a girl's head on ivory, that I'd stippled up just like ... oh,
you'd never have thought it was done by hand at all. The daylight had
gone, but I knew that "Prussian" would be about the colour for the eyes
and the bunch of flowers at her breast, and I wanted to finish.

I was working at my little table, with a shade over my eyes; and I jumped
a bit when somebody knocked at the door--not having heard anybody come up
the steps, and not having many visitors anyway. (Letters were always put
into the box in the yard door.)

When I opened the door, there he stood on the platform; and I gave a bit
of a start, having come straight from my ivory, you see. He was one of
these very tall, gaunt chaps, that make us little fellows feel even
smaller than we are; and I wondered at first where his eyes were, they
were set so deep in the dark caves on either side of his nose. Like a
skull, his head was; I could fancy his teeth curving round inside his
cheeks; and his zygomatics stuck up under his skin like razorbacks (but
if you're not one of us artists you'll not understand that). A bit of
smoky, greenish sky showed behind him; and then, as his eyes moved in
their big pits, one of them caught the light of my lamp and flashed like
a well of lustre.

He spoke abruptly, in a deep, shaky sort of voice.

"I want you to photograph me in the morning," he said. I supposed he'd
seen my printing-frames out on the window-sash some time or other.

"Come in," I said. "But I'm afraid, if it's a miniature you want, that
I'm retained--my firm retains me--you'd have to do it through them. But
come in, and I'll show you the kind of thing I do--though you ought to
have come in the daylight ..."

He came in. He was wearing a long, grey dressing-gown that came right
down to his heels and made him look something like a Noah's-ark figure.
Seen in the light, his face seemed more ghastly bony still; and as he
glanced for a moment at my little ivory he made a sound of contempt--I
know it was contempt. I thought it rather cheek,