“Vos that you yelling for the shanitor, Mr. Sdanwell?” inquired an affable voice through the doorway; and Stanwell, turning with a laugh, confronted the squat figure of a middle-aged man in an expensive fur coat, who looked as if his face secreted the oil which he used on his hair.

“Hullo, Shepson—­I should say I was yelling.  Did you ever feel such an atmosphere?  That fool has forgotten to light the stove.  Come in, but for heaven’s sake don’t take off your coat.”

Mr. Shepson glanced about the studio with a look which seemed to say that, where so much else was lacking, the absence of a fire hardly added to the general sense of destitution.

“Vell, you ain’t as vell fixed as Mr. Mungold—­ever been to his studio, Mr. Sdanwell?  De most ex_ quis_ite blush hangings, and a gas-fire, choost as natural—­”

“Oh, hang it, Shepson, do you call that a studio?  It’s like a manicure’s parlour—­or a beauty-doctor’s.  By George,” broke off Stanwell, “and that’s just what he is!”

“A peauty-doctor?”

“Yes—­oh, well, you wouldn’t see,” murmured Stanwell, mentally storing his epigram for more appreciative ears.  “But you didn’t come just to make me envious of Mungold’s studio, did you?” And he pushed forward a chair for his visitor.

The latter, however, declined it with an affable motion.  “Of gourse not, of gourse not—­but Mr. Mungold is a sensible man.  He makes a lot of money, you know.”

“Is that what you came to tell me?” said Stanwell, still humorously.

“My gootness, no—­I was downstairs looking at Holbrook’s sdained class, and I shoost thought I’d sdep up a minute and take a beep at your vork.”

“Much obliged, I’m sure—­especially as I assume that you don’t want any of it.”  Try as he would, Stanwell could not keep a note of eagerness from his voice.  Mr. Shepson caught the note, and eyed him shrewdly through gold-rimmed glasses.

“Vell, vell, vell—­I’m not prepared to commit myself.  Shoost let me take a look round, vill you?”

“With the greatest pleasure—­and I’ll give another shout for the coal.”

Stanwell went out on the landing, and Mr. Shepson, left to himself, began a meditative progress about the room.  On an easel facing the improvised dais stood a canvas on which a young woman’s head had been blocked in.  It was just in that happy state of semi-evocation when a picture seems to detach itself from the grossness of its medium and live a wondrous moment in the actual; and the quality of the head in question—­a vigorous dusky youthfulness, a kind of virgin majesty—­lent itself to this illusion of vitality.  Stanwell, who had re-entered the studio, could not help drawing a sharp breath as he saw the picture-dealer pausing with tilted head before this portrait:  it seemed, at one moment, so impossible that he should not be struck with it, at the next so incredible that he should be.

Shepson cocked his parrot-eye at the canvas with a desultory “Vat’s dat?” which sent a twinge through the young man.