"My young friend Leavesley," cried the apparition that had suddenly framed itself in the doorway; "busy as usual—and how is Art?"

"I don't know. Come in and shut the door;[Pg 5] take a seat, take a cigarette—bother this drapery—well, what have you been doing with yourself?"

Mr Verneede took neither a seat nor a cigarette. He took his place behind the painter, and gazed at the work in progress with a critical air.

He was a fantastic-looking old gentleman, dressed in a tightly-buttoned frock coat. A figure suggestive of Count d'Orsay gone to the dogs. Mildewed, washed, and mangled by Fate, and very much faded in the process.

He said nothing for a moment, and then he said, after a long and critical survey of the little genre picture on which our artist was engaged:

"Your work improves, decidedly your work improves, Leavesley—improves, very much so, very much so, very much so."

The artist said nothing, and the irresponsible critic, placing his hat on the floor and tightly clasping the umbrella he carried under his left arm, made a funnel of his hands and gazed through it at the picture.

"Decidedly, decidedly; but might I make a suggestion?"

"Yes, yes."

[Pg 6]

"Well, now, frankly, the attitude of that man with the axe——"

"Which man with the axe?"

"He in the right-hand corner by the——"

"That's not a man with an axe, that's a lady with a fan, you old owl."

"Heavens!" cried Mr Verneede. "How could I have been so deceived, it was the light. Of course, of course, of course—a lady with a fan, it's quite obvious now. A lady with a fan—do you find these very small pictures pay, Leavesley?"

"Yes—no—I don't know. Sit down, like a good fellow; that's right—look here."

"I attend."

"I'm expecting a young lady to call here to-day."

"A young lady?"

"Yes, and I wish you'd wait and see her."

"I shall be charmed."

"You will when you see her—but it's not that. See here, Verneede, I want to explain her to you."

"I listen."

"She's quite unlike any one else."

"Ha!"

"I mean in this way, she's so jolly and[Pg 7] innocent and altogether good, that upon my word I wish she wasn't coming here alone."

"You fear to trust yourself——"

"Oh, rubbish! only, it doesn't seem the thing."

"Decidedly not, decidedly not."

"Oh, rubbish! she's as safe here as if she were with her grandfather—what I mean to say is this, she's so innocent of the world that she does things quite innocently that—that conventional people don't do, don't you know. She has no mother."

"Poor young thing!"

"And her father, who is one of the jolliest men in the world, lets her do anything she likes. I wish I had a female of some sort to receive her here, but I haven't," said Mr Leavesley, looking round the studio as if in search of the article in question.

"I know of an eminently respectable female," said Mr Verneede meditatively, "who would fall in with your requirements; unfortunately, she is not available at a short notice; she lives in Hoxton, as a matter of fact."

"That's no use, might as well live in the moon. No matter, you'll do, an excellent substitute like What's-his-name's marmalade."

[Pg 8]

"May I ask," said Mr Verneede, rather stiffly, as if slightly ruffled by this last remark, "is this young lady, from a worldly point of view, an éligible partie?"

"Don't know, she's a most lovable girl. I met them in Paris, she and her father, and travelled back with them. They have a big house up at Highgate, and an estate somewhere in the country, but, somehow, I fancy their affairs are involved. Mr Lambert always seems to be going to law with people. No matter, I want to get some cakes—cakes and tea are the right sort of things to offer a person—a girl—wine is impossible. What's the time? After two! Wait here for me, I won't be long."

He took his hat, and left the studio to Mr Verneede.

Verneede was one of those bizarre figures, with whose construction Nature seems to have had very little to do. What he had been was a mystery, where he lived was to most people a mystery, and what he lived on was a mystery to every one. Some tiny income he must have had, but no man knew from whence it came. Useless and picturesque as an old fashion-plate, he wandered through life[Pg 9] with an umbrella under his arm, ready to stand at any street corner in the chill east wind or the broiling sun and listen to any tale told by any man, and give useless advice or instruction on any subject.

His criticisms were the despair and delight of artists, according to their liability to be soothed or maddened by the absolutely inane.

For the rest, he was quite harmless, his chiefest vice, after a taste for beer, a passion for borrowing umbrellas and never returning them.

Mr Verneede seated, immersed in his own weird thoughts and contemplations, came suddenly to consciousness again with a start.

A dark-haired girl of that lost type which recalls La Cruche Cassée and the Love-in-April conceptions of Fragonard, exquisitely pretty and exquisitely dressed, was in the studio. He had not heard her knock, or perceived her enter. Had she descended through the ceiling or risen from the floor? was it a real girl, or was it June materialised in a gown of corn-flower blue, and with wild field poppies in her breast?

"God bless my soul!" said Mr Verneede.

"You were asleep, I think," said the girl. "I'm so sorry to have disturbed you, but I[Pg 10] want to see Mr Leavesley; this is his studio, I think."

"Oh, certainly, yes, this is his studio, I believe. Pray take a seat. Ah, yes—dear me, what a strange coincidence——"

"And these are his pictures?" said the girl, looking round her in an interested way. She had placed a tiny parcel and an impossible parasol on the table, and was drawing off a suede glove leisurely, as she glanced around her.

"These are his pictures," answered the old gentleman, "works of art—very much so, the highest art inspired by the truest genius."

Miss Lambert—for the June-like apparition was Miss Lambert—followed with her little face the sweep of the old gentleman's arm as he pointed out the highest art inspired by the truest genius. Rough studies, canvases turned face to the wall, and one or two small finished pictures.

Then, realising that he had found an innocent victim, he began to expatiate on art and on the pictures around them, and she to listen, innocence attending to ignorance.

"He is very clever, isn't he?" put in Miss Lambert, during a pause in the exordium.

[Pg 11]

"A genius, my dear young lady, a genius," said Mr Verneede, looking at her over his shoulder as he replaced on a high bracket a little picture he had reached down to show her.

"One of the few living artists who can paint light. I may say that he paints light with a delicacy and an elegance all his own. Fiat Lux"—the shelf came down with a crash and a cloud of dust—"as the poet says—pray don't move, I will restore the débris—as the poet says. Now the gem of my young friend Leavesley's collection, in my mind, is the John the Baptist."

He went to a huge canvas which stood with its face to the wall, seized it with arms outstretched, and turned it towards the girl.

It was a picture of a semi-nude female after Reubens that the blundering old gentleman had seized upon.

"Observe the sunlight on the beard," came the voice of the showman from behind the canvas, "the devotion in the eyes, the—ooch!!"

A pillow caught from the couch by Frank Leavesley who had just entered, and dexterously thrown, had flattened canvas and showman beneath a cloud of dust.