at the back of No. 8. He raised his hat as well as an occupied arm would
allow.

"Come and wait in the studio, then," he suggested bluntly.

"You know Mr. Cannon, don't you?" said Marguerite, embarrassed.

George and Mr. Buckingham Smith had in fact been introduced to one
another weeks earlier in the Grove by Mr. Haim. Thereafter Mr.
Buckingham Smith had, as George imagined, saluted George with a kind of
jealous defiance and mistrust, and the acquaintance had not progressed.
Nor, by the way, had George's dreams been realized of entering deeply
into the artistic life of Chelsea. Chelsea had been no more welcoming
than Mr. Buckingham Smith. But now Mr. Buckingham Smith grew affable and
neighbourly. Behind the man's inevitable insistence that George should
accompany Miss Haim into the studio was a genuine, eager hospitality.

The studio was lofty and large, occupying most of the garden space of
No. 8. Crimson rep curtains, hung on a thick, blackened brass rod,
divided it into two unequal parts. By the wall nearest the house a
staircase ran up to a door high in the gable, which door communicated by
a covered bridge with the second floor of No. 8, where the artists had
bedrooms. The arrangement was a characteristic example of the manner in
which building was added to building in London contrary to the intention
of the original laying-out, and George in his expert capacity wondered
how the plans had been kept within the by-laws of the borough, and by
what chicane the consent of the ground-landlord had been obtained.

Mr. Alfred Prince, whom also George knew slightly, was trimming a huge
oil-lamp which depended by a wire from the scarcely visible apex of the