couple of mushroom-shaped old wooden wig-stands.  He did not know how they had come to be there.  Doubtless the painters had turned them up somewhere or other, and had put them there.  But his five rooms, as a whole, were short of cupboard and closet-room; and it was only by the exercise of some ingenuity that he was able to find places for the bestowal of his household linen, his boxes, and his seldom-used but not-to-be-destroyed accumulations of papers.

It was in early spring that Oleron entered on his tenancy, and he was anxious to have Romilly ready for publication in the coming autumn.  Nevertheless, he did not intend to force its production.  Should it demand longer in the doing, so much the worse; he realised its importance, its crucial importance, in his artistic development, and it must have its own length and time.  In the workroom he had recently left he had been making excellent progress; Romilly had begun, as the saying is, to speak and act of herself; and he did not doubt she would continue to do so the moment the distraction of his removal was over.  This distraction was almost over; he told himself it was time he pulled himself together again; and on a March morning he went out, returned again with two great bunches of yellow daffodils, placed one bunch on his mantelpiece between the Sheffield sticks and the other on the table before him, and took out the half-completed manuscript of Romilly Bishop.

But before beginning work he went to a small rosewood cabinet and took from a drawer his cheque-book and pass-book.  He totted them up, and his monk-like face grew thoughtful.  His installation had cost him more than he had intended it should, and his balance was rather less than fifty pounds, with no immediate prospect of more.

“Hm!  I’d forgotten rugs and chintz curtains and so forth mounted up so,” said Oleron.  “But it would have been a pity to spoil the place for the want of ten pounds or so....  Well, Romilly simply must be out for the autumn, that’s all.  So here goes—­”

He drew his papers towards him.

But he worked badly; or, rather, he did not work at all.  The square outside had its own noises, frequent and new, and Oleron could only hope that he would speedily become accustomed to these.  First came hawkers, with their carts and cries; at midday the children, returning from school, trooped into the square and swung on Oleron’s gate; and when the children had departed again for afternoon school, an itinerant musician with a mandolin posted himself beneath Oleron’s window and began to strum.  This was a not unpleasant distraction, and Oleron, pushing up his window, threw the man a penny.  Then he returned to his table again....

But it was no good.  He came to himself, at long intervals, to find that he had been looking about his room and wondering how it had formerly been furnished—­whether a settee in buttercup or petunia satin had stood under the farther window, whether from the centre moulding of the light lofty ceiling had depended a glimmering crystal chandelier, or where the tambour-frame or the picquet-table had stood....  No, it was no good; he had far better be frankly doing nothing than getting fruitlessly tired; and he decided that he would take a walk, but, chancing to sit down for a moment, dozed in his chair instead.