"Well, neither do the birds build the tree. I wonder if they ever sit in
their old summer nests in the winter nights."

"I am afraid not," I answered; "but I'm ashamed to say I can't tell."

"It is the only pretty house I know in all London," he went on, "with a
studio at the back of it. I have had my eye on it for a long time, but
there seemed no sign of a migratory disposition in the bird who had
occupied it for three years past. All at once he spread his wings and flew.
I count myself very fortunate."

"So do I. But now you must let me see your study," I said. "I hope I may
sit in it when you've got nobody there."

"As much as ever you like, my love," he answered. "Only I don't want to
make all my women like you, as I've been doing for the last two years. You
must get me out of that somehow."

"Easily. I shall be so cross and disagreeable that you will get tired of
me, and find no more difficulty in keeping me out of your pictures."

But he got me out of his pictures without that; for when he had me always
before him he didn't want to be always producing me.

He led me into the little hall,--made lovely by a cast of an unfinished
Madonna of Michael Angelo's let into the wall,--and then to the back of it,
where he opened a small cloth-covered door, when there yawned before me,
below me, and above me, a great wide lofty room. Down into it led an almost
perpendicular stair.