“I’m going to work up and exhibit another I’ve done of him, not this one; at least, I’m afraid he won’t stand this one.”

“Gad!  Have you painted him with horns and a tail?”

Whereto Morewood answered only: 

“Come and see.”

As they went in, they met Eugene, hands in pockets and pipe in mouth, looking immensely bored.

“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” said he.  “Excuse the mode of address, but I’ve not seen a soul all the morning, and thought I must have dropped down somewhere in Africa.  It’s monstrous!  I ask about ten people to my house, and I never have a soul to speak to!”

“Where’s Miss Bernard?” asked Ayre.

“Kate is learning constitutional principles from Haddington in the shrubbery.  Lady Claudia is learning sacerdotal principles from Stafford in the shrubbery.  My mother is learning equine principles from Bob Territon in the stables.  You are learning immoral principles from Morewood on the lawn.  I don’t complain, but is there anything a man can do?”

“Yes, there’s a picture to be seen—­Morewood’s latest.”

“Good!”

“I don’t know that I shall show it to Lane.”

“Oh, get out!” said Eugene.  “I shall summon the servants to my aid.  Who’s it of?”

“Stafford,” said Ayre.

“The Pope in full canonicals?”

“All right, Lane.  But you’re a friend of his, and you mayn’t like it.”

They entered the billiard-room, a long building that ran out from the west wing of the house.  In the extreme end of it Morewood had extemporized a studio, attracted by the good light.

“Give me a good top-light,” he had said, “and I wouldn’t change places with an arch-angel!”

“Your lights, top or otherwise, are not such,” Eugene remarked, “as to make it likely the berth will be offered you.”

“This picture is, I understand, Eugene, a stunner.  Give us chairs and some brandy and soda and trot it out,” said Ayre.

Morewood was unmoved by their frivolity.  He tugged at his ragged red beard for a moment or two while they were settling themselves.

“I’ll show you this first,” he said, taking up one of the canvases that leant against the wall.

It was a beautiful sketch of a half-length figure, and represented Stafford in the garb of a monk, gazing up with eager eyes, full of the vision of the Eternal City beyond the skies.  It was the face of a devotee and a visionary, and yet it was full of strength and resolution; and there was in it the look of a man who had put aside all except the service and the contemplation of the Divine.

Ayre forgot to sneer, and Eugene murmured: 

“Glorious!  What a subject!  And, old fellow, what an artist!”

“That is good,” said Morewood quietly.  “It’s fine, but as a matter of painting the other is still better.  I caught him looking like that one morning.  He came out before breakfast, very early, into the garden.  I was out there, but he didn’t see me, and he stood looking up like that for ever so long, his lips just parted and his eyes straining through the veil, as you see that.  It may be all nonsense, but—­fine, isn’t it?”