On the other hand, I felt that whether the partnership was to cost five pounds or twenty, Quarriar's future would be safer from Kazelias under the auspices of Sir Asher and his Conn. So I handed the latter the five pounds, and bade him find Quarriar a guide, philosopher, and partner. With the advent of Conn, all my troubles began, and the picture passed into its third and last stage. I soon elicited that Quarriar and his friends were rather sorry Conn had been introduced into the matter. He was alleged to favour some people at the expense of others, and to be not at all popular among the people amid whom he worked. And altogether it was abundantly clear that Quarriar would rather have gone on with the scheme in his own way without official interference. Later, Sir Asher wrote to me direct that the partner put forward by the Quarriar faction was a shady customer; Conn had selected his own man, but even so there was little hope Quarriar's future would be thus provided for. There seemed, moreover, a note of suspicion of Quarriar sounding underneath, but I found comfort in the reflection that to Sir Asher my model was nothing more than the usual applicant for assistance, whereas to me who had lived for months in daily contact with him he was something infinitely more human. Spring was now nearing; I finished my picture early in March--after four months' strenuous labour--shook hands with my model, and received his blessing. I was somewhat put out at learning that Conn had not yet given him the five pounds necessary to start him, as I had been hoping he might begin his new calling immediately the sittings ended. I gave him a small present to help tide over the time of waiting. But that tragic face on my own canvas remained to haunt me, to ask the question of his future, and few days elapsed ere I found myself starting out to visit him at his home. He lived near Ratcliffe Highway, a district which I found had none of that boisterous marine romance with which I had associated it. The house was a narrow building of at least the sixteenth century, with the number marked up in chalk on the rusty little door. I happened to have stumbled on the Jewish Passover. Quarriar was called down, evidently astonished and unprepared for my appearance at his humble abode, but he expressed pleasure, and led me up the narrow, steep stairway, whose ceiling almost touched my head as I climbed up after him. On the first floor the landlord, in festal raiment, intercepted us, introduced himself in English (which he spoke with pretentious inaccuracy), and, barring my further ascent, took possession of me, and led the way to his best parlour, as if it were entirely unbecoming for his tenant to receive a gentleman in his attic.