paucity hardly troubled him. He felt, for the nonce, assured of his
facility, and doubtless had a vista of unlimited commissions and the
world at his feet, for he drew himself up to his full height of six
feet and looked out beyond the easel with a smile that had no longer
its origin in the fruition of the artist. Indeed, as he stood there,
in his light, lax dress and the fulness of his youth, he had (his
art apart) excuse for self-complacency. He was very pleasant to look
upon, with an air of having always been popular with his fellows,
and the favourite of women; this, too, was borne out by his history.
Not a beautiful man, by any means, but the best type of English
comeliness: ruddy-coloured, straight, and healthy; muscular, but
without a suggestion of brutality. His yellow moustache, a shade
lighter than his hair--which, although he wore it cropped, showed a
tendency to be curling--concealed a mouth that was his only
questionable feature. It was not the sensitive mouth of the through
and through artist, and the lines of it were vacillating. The lips,
had they not been hidden, would have surprised by their fulness,
contradicting, in some part, the curious coldness of his light blue
eyes. All said, however, he remained a singularly handsome fellow;
and the slight consciousness which he occasionally betrayed, that
his personality was pleasing, hardly detracted from it; it was,
after all, a harmless vanity that his friends could afford to
overlook. Just then his thoughts, which had wandered many leagues
from the warehouses of Blackpool, were brought up sharply by the
noise of an approaching footstep. He started slightly, but a moment
later greeted the new-comer with a pleasant smile of recognition. It
was Rainham's foreman and general manager, with whom the artist, as
with most persons with whom he was often in contact, was on
excellent, and even familiar, terms.