But to Person and Wainwright Mr Watkins was less aggressive, and explained that the green was intended to be the first coating of his picture.  It was, he admitted in response to a remark, an absolutely new method, invented by himself.  But subsequently he became more reticent; he explained he was not going to tell every passer-by the secret of his own particular style, and added some scathing remarks upon the meanness of people “hanging about” to pick up such tricks of the masters as they could, which immediately relieved him of their company.

Twilight deepened, first one then another star appeared.  The rooks amid the tall trees to the left of the house had long since lapsed into slumbrous silence, the house itself lost all the details of its architecture and became a dark grey outline, and then the windows of the salon shone out brilliantly, the conservatory was lighted up, and here and there a bedroom window burnt yellow.  Had anyone approached the easel in the park it would have been found deserted.  One brief uncivil word in brilliant green sullied the purity of its canvas.  Mr Watkins was busy in the shrubbery with his assistant, who had discreetly joined him from the carriage-drive.

Mr Watkins was inclined to be self-congratulatory upon the ingenious device by which he had carried all his apparatus boldly, and in the sight of all men, right up to the scene of operations.  “That’s the dressing-room,” he said to his assistant, “and, as soon as the maid takes the candle away and goes down to supper, we’ll call in.  My! how nice the house do look, to be sure, against the starlight, and with all its windows and lights!  Swopme, Jim, I almost wish I was a painter-chap.  Have you fixed that there wire across the path from the laundry?”

He cautiously approached the house until he stood below the dressing-room window, and began to put together his folding ladder.  He was much too experienced a practitioner to feel any unusual excitement.  Jim was reconnoitring the smoking-room.  Suddenly, close beside Mr Watkins in the bushes, there was a violent crash and a stifled curse.  Someone had tumbled over the wire which his assistant had just arranged.  He heard feet running on the gravel pathway beyond.  Mr Watkins, like all true artists, was a singularly shy man, and he incontinently dropped his folding ladder and began running circumspectly through the shrubbery.  He was indistinctly aware of two people hot upon his heels, and he fancied that he distinguished the outline of his assistant in front of him.  In another moment he had vaulted the low stone wall bounding the shrubbery, and was in the open park.  Two thuds on the turf followed his own leap.