Meantime Strange had been looking carefully through some of Brydon’s sketches, scattered everywhere. “You’ll draw as well as you colour, old man, and that is more than I ever expected of you. What does Legrun say?” “He says he’ll say nothing until I have unlearned every cursed mannerism I have picked up in England, that den of bad taste. Then ‘_peut-être_—who knows?’ “But the fellow rages just as much against his own rapid methods, as he does against those we’ve been born and bred in. How dare we think to get an effect with a few strokes like he does, he, who has worked, _parbleu!_ who has sweated, who has prayed, who has blasphemed, who has torn the heart out of his body to arrive at this ease, this divine confidence—‘the head of us should be punched!’ he is great in English. We must take twenty strokes to one of his; we must do with pain, with tears, what is but ‘_delices_’ to him—details—we must know them as the ‘_bon Dieu_’ knows them, before we venture to omit or even to suggest one! Then he ups and splutters out some delicious blasphemy on some unwary youth’s head. “Look at me, the ghost of a creature, stalking mournfully on eggs, with furtive fear in all my lineaments. And this is an artist’s training! Good Lord, when I remember how I sat in that garret in Bland Street and thought of fame and myself in a new suit, dancing a war-dance before my masterpiece on the line, with duchesses squabbling for the first shake of my hand!—Lady Strange, I am going to make some tea.” “I wish you would,” said Gwen laughing, “we walked, and I am so thirsty.” “Hu!” said Brydon, examining his milk-jug when he had filled his kettle and set it on the little charcoal stove, “every drop gone! I won’t be two minutes. The old lady on the first flat and I are affinities to a certain extent; in return for sundry packets of English tea, she keeps me in milk at odd times. Strange, will you shepherd the kettle?” “I wonder if his cups are clean?” said Strange rummaging them out of a cupboard over the stove, “look, an inch thick with dust, and the handles! That fellow moons too much to be very cleanly. Look at the tea-cloth, Lord! Have you a clean handkerchief, Gwen?” Gwen’s brows contracted slightly. She was a dainty person and unpractical, and teacups in connection with handkerchiefs gave her an uncomfortable feeling of impropriety. She gave him a handkerchief however, with a small gasp of disgust, and watched his doings with a faint, half-scornful interest. “How particular you are!” she said, “I had no idea you could trouble yourself about such things.” “I can’t stand dirt in man or beast.” “How did you stand travelling—in Algeria, for example?”