The thought broke off with an uneasy interrogative.

He turned to the few lines of text devoted to the painter.  Norbert Franks, he read, was still a very young man; “Sanctuary,” now on exhibition at Birmingham, was his first important picture; hitherto he had been chiefly occupied with work in black and white.  There followed a few critical comments, and prophecy of achievements to come.

Yes.  But again the uneasy interrogative.

Their acquaintance dated from the year after Warburton’s return from St. Kitts.  Will had just established himself in his flat near Chelsea Bridge, delighted to be a Londoner, and was spending most of his leisure in exploration of London’s vastness.  He looked upon all his earlier years as wasted, because they had not been passed in the city on the Thames.  The history of London, the multitudinous life of London as it lay about him, with marvels and mysteries in every highway and byway, occupied his mind, and wrought upon his imagination.  Being a stout walker, and caring little for any other form of exercise, in his free hours he covered many a league of pavement.  A fine summer morning would see him set forth, long before milk-carts had begun to rattle along the streets, and on one such expedition, as he stepped briskly through a poor district south of the river, he was surprised to see an artist at work, painting seriously, his easel in the dry gutter.  He slackened his pace to have a glimpse of the canvas, and the painter, a young, pleasant-looking fellow, turned round and asked if he had a match.  Able to supply this demand, Warburton talked whilst the other relit his pipe.  It rejoiced him, he said, to see a painter engaged upon such a subject as this—­a bit of squalid London’s infinite picturesqueness.

The next morning Warburton took the same walk, and again found the painter at work.  They talked freely; they exchanged invitations; and that same evening Norbert Franks climbed the staircase to Will’s flat, and smoked his first pipe and drank his first whisky-and-soda in the pleasant room overlooking Ranelagh.  His own quarters were in Queen’s Road, Battersea, at no great distance.  The two young men were soon seeing a great deal of each other.  When their friendship had ripened through a twelvemonth, Franks, always impecunious, cheerily borrowed a five-pound note; not long after, he mirthfully doubled his debt; and this grew to a habit with him.

“You’re a capitalist, Warburton,” he remarked one day, “and a generous fellow, too.  Of course I shall pay what I owe you when I sell a big picture.  Meanwhile, you have the gratification of supporting a man of genius, without the least inconvenience to yourself.  Excellent idea of yours to strike up a friendship, wasn’t it?”