“The last; and it is the last picture I shall paint.  As soon as it is completed I shall leave here.”

“You will leave?” she asked, paying little heed to his words.

“Yes!  The experiment has not succeeded,” and he waved a hand towards the wall.  “I shall take better means next time.”

“How much remains to be done?” Lady Tamworth stepped over to the easel.  With a quick spring Julian placed himself in front of it.

“No!” he cried vehemently, raising a hand to warn her off.  “No!”

Lady Tamworth’s curiosity began to reawaken.  “You have shown me the rest.”

“I know; you had a right to see them.”

“Then why not that?”

“I have told you,” he said stubbornly.  “It is not finished.”

“But when it is finished?” she insisted.

Julian looked at her strangely.  “Well, why not?” he said reasoning with himself.  “Why not?  It is the masterpiece.”

“You will let me know when it’s ready?”

“I will send it to you; for I shall leave here the day I finish it.”

They went down stairs and back into the Mile-End road.  Julian hailed a passing hansom, and Lady Tamworth drove westwards to Berkeley Square.

The fifth picture arrived a week later in the dusk of the afternoon. 
Lady Tamworth unpacked it herself with an odd foreboding.

It represented an orchard glowing in the noontide sun.  From the branches of a tree with lolling tongue and swollen twisted face swung the figure which had grovelled before the god.  A broken chain dangled on its wrist, a few links of the chain lay on the grass beneath, and above the white figure winged and triumphant faded into the blue of the sky; and underneath was written, “He freeth himself from his burden.”

Lady Tamworth rushed to the bell and pealed loudly for her maid.  “Quick!” she cried, “I am going out.”  But the shrill screech of a newsboy pierced into the room.  With a cry she flung open the window.  She could hear his voice plainly at the corner of the square.  For a while she clung to the sash in a dumb sickness.  Then she said quietly:  “Never mind!  I will not go out after all!  I did not know I was so late.”