now_ (this must sound awfully silly to you) that he was down yonder,
thinking of me and doing something to me. And one night I was so sure
that it wasn't fancy that I jumped straight up from my work, and I'm not
quite sure what happened then, until I found myself in his studio, just
as if I'd walked there in my sleep.

And he seemed to be waiting for me, for there was a chair by his own, in
front of the statue.

"What is it, Benlian?" I burst out.

"Ah!" he said.... "Well, it's about that arm, Pudgie; I want you to tell
me about the arm. Does it look so strange as it did?"

"No," I said.

"I thought it wouldn't," he observed. "But I haven't touched it,
Pudgie--"

So I stayed the evening there.

But you must not think he was always doing that thing--whatever it
was--to me. On the other hand, I sometimes felt the oddest sort of
release (I don't know how else to put it) ... like when, on one of these
muggy, earthy-smelling days, when everything's melancholy, the wind
freshens up suddenly and you breathe again. And that (I'm trying to take
it in order, you see, so that it will be plain to you) brings me to the
time I found out that _he_ did that too, and knew when he was doing it.

I'd gone into his place one night to have a look at his statue. It was
surprising what a lot I was finding out about that statue. It was still
all out of proportion (that is to say, I knew it must be--remembered I'd
thought so--though it didn't annoy me now quite so much. I suppose I'd
lost _my_ fresh eye by that time). Somehow, too, my own miniatures had
begun to look a bit kiddish; they made me impatient; and that's horrible,
to be discontented with things that once seemed jolly good to you.

Well, he'd been looking at me in the hungriest sort of way, and I looking
at the statue, when all at once that feeling of release and lightness
came over me. The first I knew of it was that I found myself thinking of
some rather important letters my firm had written to me, wanting to know
when a job I was doing was going to be finished. I thought myself it was
time I got it finished; I thought I'd better set about it at once; and I
sat suddenly up in my chair, as if I'd just come out of a sleep. And,
looking at the statue, I saw it as it had seemed at first--all misshapen
and out of drawing.

The very next moment, as I was rising, I sat down again as suddenly as if
somebody had pulled me back.

Now a chap doesn't like to be changed about like