When he got outside his rooms, which were in a turning off Piccadilly, Strange looked up and down the street and at his watch.

“I shall not bother with luncheon, that ham will last till eight,” he said, “I shall go to the Club and I suppose I must see Aunt Moll. I’ll go there to tea, she’ll be up probably, and perhaps awake by that time.”

He struck out for his Club and made a rapid tour of the premises but he found there was no good to be got there, the billiard-rooms were empty and the reading-rooms were given over to half a dozen old fellows suffering from gout and senile decay.

“It’s too early and too late for anything,” he muttered, as he lighted a fresh cigar on the steps, “it will be a full week, besides, before I get into the swing again. I shall try Brydon.”

With that he swung off down the street, past some big thoroughfares, then he cut across a mesh of alleys and courts, out into some dingy squares, landing at last in Bloomsbury Square. He walked round till he got to a tall narrow house in a corner, where he pulled up, pushed open the door, which was ajar, and went upstairs to the fifth story where he found a door with “Mr. Brydon” painted on it in big letters. He opened it, and walked in.

A big fair boy with a cigarette in his mouth was sitting before an easel, touching up a background; he spoke in a soft tired voice without turning an inch of himself.

“Excuse me, Carry, I can’t possibly stand up, I am wrestling with a curtain. Kindly sit down and begin your apologies. Was Ma’s ‘neuralgy’ bad, or the baby? Was it ‘it’? I am not quite certain as to the sex of the last.—By the way, don’t they come with undue speed, those babies, or do you spread all the diseases out on one?—Or did Pa go for you and render your nose unfit for immortality? Two hours behind time to-day, that’s nothing to you in the day’s work, no doubt, but I may remark that it’s slightly inconvenient to me, as I prefer daylight to dark to catch the super-excellent tones of your skin.”

“I should have thought on the whole that the glow——”

“Strange!” he cried with a soft slow gurgle of intense delight, and lifting himself clumsily up from his seat, he caught Strange’s hand in a close clasp and pushed him back into an old frilled arm-chair.

“I thought you were in Algeria. It was a dangerous experiment, old fellow; the betting was ten to one that I was painting off a model, and I am continually overlooking that lock. You’re only just back, I see. What a glorious dusty smooth red you’ve got on your cheeks! For goodness sake, let me have it before gas and sich play the deuce with it.”

“Take it, my child, take it. What a pity you didn’t have the beard too! that was a far more glorious red, and a sight dustier, but I parted with it this morning.”

“Thank you, I’ve seen your bristles once; I never wish to behold them again. Now smoke, and I’ll just have a shy at catching that tint, it’s precisely what I want for this beggar’s cheek. My model had it to perfection, but they clapped him into quad for prigging saveloys, and when he comes out he will be useless, the colour of bad paste.”

“Your room’s hardly serious enough; it’s pretty, in a doll’s-house style.”

“Serious! I can’t afford that. One can’t extract seriousness from rags, but the colours are good and the cost small. Look at the drapery hiding the crack in the wall in that corner, fourpence-halfpenny the yard and a reduction by the piece!”

“And you probably went dinnerless for that!” thought Strange, watching the tall heavy-looking fellow, with his straight, limp brown hair hanging over his forehead in a way that gave him a queer, foolish look, an effect that his big alive eyes were constantly contradicting.

The soft, sleepy tones of his voice which, only that they happened to be peculiarly clear, would never have been heard at all, added rather to this effect. Strange, however, was quite aware that the eyes of the fellow spoke the truth, and that the hair and the soft speech lied.

His father had been curate in the parish where Strange’s father was the Squire, and even then the big boy had been good to the little one, and the unequal friendship was still kept up between the two. It was a pleasant little corner in the life of the older man, it was the best part of life to the boy, and no one had a notion of the intense love and gratitude he bore to the big notable man who took the trouble to know him.

Strange had stood by him in the bad crisis of his life, when things had come to a head and his father, the curate, had put down his foot and damned art permanently, and the boy, for his part, had comprehensively damned the church, and had then stepped out of the parental porch with a five-pound note in his pocket, and in his eyes the yearning greed for colour.

“How are you getting on?” said Strange.

“Oh, I live, and I hardly owe a thing, which is a consolation, in case I happened to die off in a hurry, and had to be beholden to the governor to fork up. I have no feelings at all about the funeral expenses or the shroud, I shall make no provision for these, they seem in his line, somehow. But it would cut the old man up frightfully if he had to pay the models or the beer, or anything smacking of the devil, you know—Would you mind turning your face an inch to the right?”

“What are you at? Haven’t you got the brick-dust yet?”

“Yes, in a way, but I want to sketch you,” said Brydon, measuring him with his pencil, “I won’t be long; you look so cool, and big, and ‘kinder’ dogged, you’ve given me a notion. You’ve grown frightfully since you went away, especially about the eyes, they’ve got so beastly deep and intricate, why don’t you have eyes like decent God-fearing mortals?”

“Ask my parents; if they refuse you the information, I can only refer you to my godfather and godmother—By the way, what’s wrong with you, Charlie?”

“Me!—Nothing!—I had another bout of rheumatic fever a month ago, and I have felt a trifle stodgy since at times, especially after a grind up these stairs.”

“Heart!” thought Strange. “Poor beggar! it’ll be hard on him if he’s carried off before he learns to draw. Will you dine with me to-day?”

Brydon’s face lit, he had ecstatic memories of dinners with Strange, and as a matter of fact his dinners for two days past, had consisted of bread—and mustard to give it a relish.

“Thank you, old man, I can’t—I can’t go anywhere till Friday.”

“Why, in Heaven’s name?”

“I have some black and white to do,” he said mixing some paint hurriedly.

Strange took a glance at his back view and shrugged his shoulders.

“The beggar’s sure to let it out, he always does,” he reflected.

After a few minutes’ silent painting Brydon turned round.

“I generally tell you most things,” he said, “if you wait long enough, and you know by this time what an abject ass I am, so you may as well hear the climax.

“I was down sketching in Surrey last month. I went after the fever—I didn’t feel as if I could stand the stairs just then—and I found a girl in a cottage there who was willing to sit for me whenever I wanted her. She was—divine! Look!” he got up slowly and took a little canvas from behind the door. “Look! Did Greuse ever have such a head to paint from? I fell in love with her. Of course, it was that colour that did it; that, and her poses, and all her little ways and movements, and her soft little voice—oh—oh—you know the sort of fool I am! I lodged at her mother’s house, and the pair nursed me as if I were a sick cat—well—Look!—I had to leave that place at a moment’s notice or I don’t know what might have happened—you know. I paid up and cleared.

“Would you believe it, I hadn’t been home a week, when who should appear one night past ten o’clock but that girl? Upon my word, I broke out in a cold sweat all over. I’m as weak as water, and—she was divine. I tell you—I had an awful job altogether. I quieted her down first, then I had to bathe her feet, such pretty pink little ones, but all torn and bruised. If you believe me, she had walked from ten miles this side of Godalming. I got her some food and gave her up my bed, and somehow or other I got her back next day; she’d have stayed on any terms, poor little soul! Girls are queer fish,” he said modestly, “one never can tell what’ll fetch them. It was all pretty hot on the mother, however, so I gave her the few shillings I had, and then she wrote to say that the girl got fever from the walk, so of course I’ve had to help them, and I regret to say my boots have gone for a change to mine uncle’s. I shall be paid on Friday, and then I’ll bloom back into my pristine glory and accept invitations.

“I wonder,” he went on reflectively, “if there’s any way of keeping a fellow from making a fool of himself. If you have happened to hear of any in your travels, an anti-love philtre now, for Heaven’s sake divulge it, it ruins one’s work getting in love in a promiscuous way, it’s a brutal nuisance too, and devilish expensive. I know I always have to pay compound interest for my pleasures in this line, and they’re absolutely mawkish too, in their innocence,” he added, with a little injured sigh.

Strange watched the boy curiously, wondering what possible motive, or train of motives, combined to keep his life so clean, with its every condition on the side of uncleanness.

“He has neither convictions nor religion to hold him, he is as passionate and sensual a fellow as any going, he is steeped to the lips in Zola and others of that ilk; theoretically, innocence and he are as far apart as the poles. He is a fool, no doubt, but I wish to God the folly would last.”

Brydon guessed the elder man’s thoughts, or perhaps his own were running on the same lines, as he sketched in the strong steady cool face with a breadth of technique that was marvellous in a boy of his age and opportunities.

“I wonder myself,” he said, “I don’t make more of my pleasures. A fellow has opportunities somehow,” he added with pleasing diffidence, “no matter how poor he is but I have a sort of notion I might lose in Art what I should gain in pleasure. It would be idiotic to run that risk, wouldn’t it? I have a sort of theory, it’s probably rot though it has a sound of truth about it, that the cleaner one keeps one’s body and soul, the clearer one’s eyes keep and the better able to tackle the truth in Nature.”

He paused, a little embarrassed; any expression, even of the most primitive morality, brings a blush of shame to the cheek of youth.

“That sounds like a workable theory,” assented Strange, “and upon my word, I believe you will find it so. The opposite is playing the deuce with the modern Italian school, and it strikes one like a blow in a lot of the work of the youngsters there. I would thresh out that theory, if I were you, nothing half and half will do.”

“No,” said Brydon ruefully, “no, that is where the grind comes in.”

Strange laughed, the fellow’s face and accent fitted his speech so comically.

“I suppose I must let him get over the boot business himself, he’s so beastly cocky, but I’m convinced he’s hungry. I wonder how much the jade got out of him! Charlie,” he then said aloud, “I must be off, I shall expect you on Friday at my Club. If I were you, old chap, I should stop that young person’s supplies, the fever must be off her by this time.”

“I have a sort of awful conviction that it’s going to be intermittent, and that nothing but a change of address will have any effect upon it—but, oh, old man, if you could have seen that girl,” he concluded regarding her head mournfully, with his own on one side, and with an overwhelming longing for the Egyptian flesh-pots surging up within him.

Strange slapped him on the shoulder, “Just as well not, fevers come expensive, whether they take you, or the victim to your charms. Good-bye.”

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