“_Do not know!_ But remember that I _do_ know the pictures! Ha!” The huge Russian snatched from his breast pocket a very small flat jade case, snapped it open, extracted a minute, orange-colored cigarette, which he stuck into a very long black holder, and began to smoke ferociously. Out of the astonishing clouds which at once began to drift from his quivering and expansive nostrils his voice growled and reverberated huskily. “Can one see the pictures and not adore the dancer? But, I forget. You, Mr. Weyman, have seen the pictures, I understand, without allowing yourself to become at all disturbed by their beauty. You have even seen the painter himself. Seen him once plain! Alive! In the flesh! Even called him ‘Friend’! But from you who has ever heard a word of his great art? How is this? Ha! He had to wait and wait and wait until he was dying and a little trifler with art, this little Mr. Frye, came along and thought the paintings pretty. And it is this little dabbler, this no-account would-be painter, who consoles the dying genius, who promises that his life’s work shall be shown, shall be recognized. While you, who knew him for years—Joan says it has been many years—your part has been kindly, oh, so very, very kindly, to take his daughter, the divine child of his muse, and employ her as a servant in your household. But you may intend kindness. One never knows. The certainty is that you are blind. Your perception of beauty is dead or never existed.... I,—I have come to see the dancer.” “Michael! You’re being outrageous. Hugh, he’s not responsible. Don’t even notice him. He sometimes gets this way.” Joan was up, moving about restlessly. Suddenly she stopped, swung about, put a hand on Schwankovsky’s arm. “Michael!” she spoke as to a sleepwalker, cautiously but firmly. “Wait till you see your dancer. You may find that all this excitement is sheer waste, that Hugh is right, and Ariel is quite ordinary. Besides, she isn’t exactly a servant here. You misunderstood me. She’s a companion-nurse. There’s quite a little difference.”