"

Seeing that several of the other students were smoking, Cuthbert filled
and lighted his pipe, calmly placed the pictures on the easels without
taking off the cloths in which they were wrapped, and then put his hands
into the pockets of his velvet jacket and looked round the room. After
his experience of some of the luxuriously arranged studios at St. John's
Wood, the room looked bare and desolate. There was no carpet and not a
single chair or lounge of any description. Some fifteen young fellows
were painting. All wore workmen's blouses. All had mustaches, and most
of them had long hair. They appeared intent on their work, but smiles
and winks were furtively exchanged, and the careless nonchalance of this
tall young Englishman evidently amused them. In four or five minutes M.
Goude turned round and walked towards the easels. Cuthbert stepped to
them and removed the cloths. The master stopped abruptly, looked at them
without speaking for a minute or two, then walked up and closely
examined them.

"They are entirely your own work?" he asked.

"Certainly, I did not show either of them to my master until I had
finished them."

They were companion pictures. The one was a girl standing in a veranda
covered with a grapevine, through which bright rays of sunshine shone,
one of them falling full on her face. She was evidently listening, and
there was a look of joyous expectancy in her face. Underneath, on the
margin of the canvas, was written in charcoal, "Hope." The other
represented the same figure, darkly dressed, with a wan, hopeless look
in her face, standing on a rock at the edge of an angry sea, over which
she was gazing; while the sky overhead was dark and sombre without a
rift in the hurrying clouds. It was labelled "Despair."

For two or three minutes longer M. Goude looked silently at the pictures
and then turning suddenly called out, "Attention, gentlemen. Regard
these pictures, they are the work of this gentleman who desires to enter
my studio. In the eight years I have been teaching I have had over two
hundred canvases submitted to me, but not one like these. I need not say
that I shall be glad to receive him. He has been well taught. His
technique is good and he has genius. Gentlemen, I have the honor to
present to you Monsieur Cuthbert Hartington, who is henceforth one of
you."

The students crowded round the pictures with exclamations of surprise
and admiration. It was not until M. Goude said sharply "