Chaos seemed to have come back again at the abode of James Magnus, and modern nature and art to have joined hands to cover the aforesaid chaos with dust. For there was dust everywhere; thick, black, sooty dust of that peculiar kind that affects Fitzroy-square. It was never removed, save when a picture, chair, or "property" was taken from one part of the place to another, and the dust thus set floating, floated and settled upon something else. Certainly there was some kind of order in the sitting and bed-room, where the artists man attended, but it was mostly disorder. "I hate having my things moved," said Magnus. "When I set to work, I like to be able to begin at once, and not have to hunt for everything I want." "I think the place is just perfect," said Harry Artingale. "One can get plenty of tidiness everywhere else, Jemmy, and I like coming to the den to be a beast." So to make matters more comfortable Artingale, at first out of fun, later on from habit, used to carefully place all his cigar ashes and ends wherever he could find a ledge--on the chimney-pieces, on the tops of upturned canvases, on the inner parts of their frames, and balance soda-water and beer or hock corks upon the properties. You entered the lobby or hall to be confronted by dusty busts and casts, and you went thence into the studio to be confronted by more dusty busts and casts. There were life-sized plaster figures of plenty of well-known antiques mixed up with a heterogeneous collection of artistic odds and ends. There were canvases new and old, with charcoal drawings, sketches, and half-finished paintings, costumes of all kinds, savage weapons, arms and armour, easels from the simplest to the most modern with its screws, and racks and reflectors, and tubes for gas. Rich pieces of carpet partially covered the floor. On one side stood a large raised dais for sitters, and for non-sitters who wished to sit down there were quaint old carven chairs. The value of the contents of that studio must have been great, for James Magnus earned a great deal of money, and never grudged spending it upon what he called necessaries for his art. Hence it was that handsome vases and specimens of bronze and brass work were plentiful, but they were stuck anywhere, and as often as not held empty or full paint tubes, or served as supports to great palettes covered with pigments of every hue. The sitting-room was almost a repetition of the studio, but it was thickly carpeted, and contained more furniture, with easy-chairs, a dining-table of massive oak, and had a free and easy, chaotic comfort about it that would make a bachelor feel quite at home. The walls bore plenty of pictures, mostly from the brushes of brother artists, and these, with the great full folios, formed a most valuable collection.