French acquiesced. “I suppose, like all the very greatest of them, he was indifferent to lots of things we think important.” “Yes—and then....” Paul hesitated. “Then they were so frightfully poor. He didn’t know how to manage—how to get on with people, either sitters or dealers. For years he sold nothing, literally nothing. It _was_ hard on her. She saw so well what he ought to have done; but he wouldn’t listen to her!” “Oh—” French stammered; and saw the other faintly redden. “I don’t mean, of course, that an artist, a great creative artist, isn’t always different ... on the contrary....” Paul hesitated again. “I understand all that.... I’ve experienced it....” His handsome face softened, and French, mollified, murmured to himself: “He was awfully kind to Emily Morland—I’m sure he was.” “Only,” Mrs. Paul’s husband continued with a deepening earnestness, as if he were trying to explain to French something not quite clear to himself, “only, if you’re not a great creative artist yourself, it is hard sometimes, sitting by and looking on and feeling that if you were just allowed to say a word—. Of course,” he added abruptly, “he was very good to her in other ways; very grateful. She was his Inspiration.” “It’s something to have been that,” French said; and at the words his companion’s colour deepened to a flush which took in his neck and ears, and spread up to his white forehead. “It’s everything,” he agreed, almost solemnly. French had wandered up to a book-shelf in what had apparently been Fingall’s dressing-room. He had seen no other books about, and was curious to learn what these had to tell him. They were chiefly old Tauchnitz novels—mild mid-Victorian fiction rubbing elbows with a few odd volumes of Dumas, Maupassant and Zola. But under a loose pile the critic, with beating heart, had detected a shabby sketch-book. His hand shook as he opened it; but its pages were blank, and he reflected ironically that had they not been the dealers would never have left it there. “They’ve been over the place with a fine-toothcomb,” he muttered to himself. “What have you got hold of?” Donald Paul asked, coming up. French continued mechanically to flutter the blank pages; then his hand paused at one which was scribbled over with dots and diagrams, and marginal notes in Fingall’s small cramped writing.