I suppose some of these real, regular artists wouldn’t have called me an artist at all; for I only painted miniatures, and it was trade-work at that, copied from photographs and so on.  Not that I wasn’t jolly good at it, and punctual too (lots of these high-flown artists have simply no idea of punctuality); and the loft was cheap, and suited me very well.  But, of course, a sculptor wants a big place on the ground floor; it’s slow work, that with blocks of stone and marble that cost you twenty pounds every time you lift them; so Benlian had the studio.  His name was on a plate on the door, but I’d never seen him till this time I’m telling you of.

I was working that evening at one of the prettiest little things I’d ever done:  a girl’s head on ivory, that I’d stippled up just like ... oh, you’d never have thought it was done by hand at all.  The daylight had gone, but I knew that “Prussian” would be about the colour for the eyes and the bunch of flowers at her breast, and I wanted to finish.

I was working at my little table, with a shade over my eyes; and I jumped a bit when somebody knocked at the door—­not having heard anybody come up the steps, and not having many visitors anyway. (Letters were always put into the box in the yard door.)

When I opened the door, there he stood on the platform; and I gave a bit of a start, having come straight from my ivory, you see.  He was one of these very tall, gaunt chaps, that make us little fellows feel even smaller than we are; and I wondered at first where his eyes were, they were set so deep in the dark caves on either side of his nose.  Like a skull, his head was; I could fancy his teeth curving round inside his cheeks; and his zygomatics stuck up under his skin like razorbacks (but if you’re not one of us artists you’ll not understand that).  A bit of smoky, greenish sky showed behind him; and then, as his eyes moved in their big pits, one of them caught the light of my lamp and flashed like a well of lustre.

He spoke abruptly, in a deep, shaky sort of voice.

“I want you to photograph me in the morning,” he said.  I supposed he’d seen my printing-frames out on the window-sash some time or other.

“Come in,” I said.  “But I’m afraid, if it’s a miniature you want, that I’m retained—­my firm retains me—­you’d have to do it through them.  But come in, and I’ll show you the kind of thing I do—­though you ought to have come in the daylight ...”

He came in.  He was wearing a long, grey dressing-gown that came right down to his heels and made him look something like a Noah’s-ark figure.  Seen in the light, his face seemed more ghastly bony still; and as he glanced for a moment at my little ivory he made a sound of contempt—­I know it was contempt.  I thought it rather cheek, coming into my place and—­

He turned his cavernous eyeholes on me.

“I don’t want anything of that sort.  I want you to photograph me.  I’ll be here at ten in the morning.”