“Ye’ll know with what foolish generosity poor Michael always gave his things away,” he said.  “Hallard has a grand set; so has Connolly; and from time to time he behaved varry handsomely to myself.  Artists of varry considerable talents both Hallard and Connolly are; Michael thought varry highly of their abilities.  They express the deepest interest in the shape your worrk will take; and that reminds me.  I myself have drafted a rough scenario of the forrm it appeared to me the ‘Life’ might with advantage be cast in.  A purely private opinion, ye’ll understand, Harrison, which ye’ll be entirely at liberty to disregard....”

“Well, let’s finish with the work first,” I said.

With boards, loose sheets, scraps of paper, notes, studies, canvases stretched and stripped from their stretchers, we paved half the library floor, Schofield keeping up all the time a running fire of “Grand, grand!  A masterpiece!  A gem, that, Harrison!” They were all that he said, and presently I ceased to hear his voice.  The splendour of the work issued undimmed even from the severe test of Schofield’s praise; and I thought again with pride how I, I, was the only man living who could adequately write that “Life."....

“Aren’t they grand?  Aren’t they great?” Schofield chanted monotonously.

“They are,” I replied, coming to a consciousness of his presence again.  “But what’s that?”

Secretively he had kept one package until the last.  He now removed its wrappings and set it against a chair.

"There!" he cried.  “I’ll thank ye, Harrison, for your opinion of that!"

It was the portrait Andriaovsky had refused to sell me—­a portrait of himself.

The portrait was the climax of the display.  The Lancastrian still talked; but I, profoundly moved, mechanically gathered up the drawings from the floor and returned them to their proper packages and folios.  I was dining at home, alone, that evening, and for form’s sake I asked this faithful dog of Andriaovsky’s to share my meal; but he excused himself—­he was dining with Hallard and Connolly.  When the drawings were all put away, all save that portrait, he gave an inquisitive glance round my library.  It was the same glance as Maschka had given when she had feared to intrude on my time; but Schofield did these things with a much more heavy hand.  He departed, but not before telling me that even my mansion contained such treasures as it had never held before.

That evening, after glancing at Schofield’s “scenario,” I carefully folded it up again for return to him, lest when the book should appear he should miss the pleasure of saying that I had had his guidance but had disregarded it; then I sat down at my writing-table and took out the loose notes I had made.  I made other jottings, each on a blank sheet for subsequent amplification; and the sheets overspread the large leather-topped table and thrust one another up the standard of the incandescent with the pearly silk shade.  The firelight shone low and richly in the dusky spaces of the large apartment; and the thick carpet and the double doors made the place so quiet that I could hear my watch ticking in my pocket.