"So you keep a little private precipice here," I said.

"No, my dear," he returned; "you mistake. It is a Jacob's ladder,--or will
be in one moment more."

He gave me his hand, and led me down.

"This is quite a banqueting-hall, Percivale!" I cried, looking round me.

"It shall be, the first time I get a thousand pounds for a picture," he
returned.

"How grand you talk!" I said, looking up at him with some wonder; for big
words rarely came out of his mouth.

"Well," he answered merrily, "I had two hundred and seventy-five for the
last."

"That's a long way off a thousand," I returned, with a silly sigh.

"Quite right; and, therefore, this study is a long way off a
banqueting-hall."

There was literally nothing inside the seventeen feet cube except one
chair, one easel, a horrible thing like a huge doll, with no end of joints,
called a lay figure, but Percivale called it his bishop; a number of
pictures leaning their faces against the walls in attitudes of grief that
their beauty was despised and no man would buy them; a few casts of legs
and arms and faces, half a dozen murderous-looking weapons, and a couple of