‘Don’t know—­give it up!’ he said, impudently, and went off whistling.

‘Silly lout,’ said the woman, crossly, and, taking up the package, which was not very large, she went with it to the studio, reflecting as she went that by the feel of it it was an unframed picture, and that if some one would only take away some of the beastly, dusty things that were already in the house—­that wouldn’t, so the bailiffs said, fetch a halfpenny—­it would be better worth while than bringing new ones where they weren’t wanted.

There was at first no answer to her knock.  She tried the door, and wondered to find it locked.  But presently she heard Fenwick moving about inside.

‘Well, what is it?’

His voice was low and impatient.

‘A parcel for you, sir.’

‘Take it away.’

‘Very well, sir.’

She turned obediently and was halfway down the passage which led to the dining-room, when the studio door opened with a great crash and Fenwick looked out.

‘Bring that here.  What is it?’

She retraced her steps.

‘Well, it’s a picture, I think, sir.’

He held out his hand for it, took it, and instantly withdrew into the studio and again locked the door.  She noticed that he seemed to have lit one candle in the big studio, and his manner struck her as strange.  But her slow mind followed the matter no further, and she went back to the cooking of his slender supper.

Fenwick meanwhile was standing with the parcel in his hand.  At the woman’s knock he had risen from a table, where he had been writing a letter.  A black object, half-covered with a painting-rag, lay beside the ink-stand.

‘I must make haste,’ he thought, ‘or she will be bothering me again.’

He looked at the letter, which was still unfinished.  Meanwhile he had absently deposited the parcel on the floor, where it rested against the leg of the table.

’Another page will finish it.  Hotel Bristol, Rome—­till the end of the week?—­if I only could be sure that was what Butlin said!’

He paced up and down, frowning, in an impotent distress, trying to make his brain work as usual.  On his visit of the afternoon he had asked the lawyers for the Findon’s address; but his memory now was of the worst.

Suddenly he wheeled round, sat down, and took up a book which had been lying face downwards on the table.  It was the ’Memoirs of Benjamin Haydon,’ and he opened it at one of the last pages—­

’About an hour after, Miss Haydon entered the painting-room, and found her father stretched out dead, before the easel on which stood, blood-sprinkled, his unfinished picture.  A portrait of his wife stood on a smaller easel facing his large picture.’

* * * * *

The man reading, paused.

‘He had suffered much more than I,’ he thought—­’but his wife had helped him—­stood by him—­’