Golda made him put on his best clothes, and washed him and brushed his hair. He packed up half a dozen drawings and his picture of the apples, which had been too precious to trust to the post or to Sir Julius, and he set out for Hampstead. To cool his excitement he walked across the Heath, remembering vividly the day when he had first seen it, and again it seemed to him a place of freedom and surpassing loveliness, the sweet, comfortable quality of the grass only accentuated by the bare patches of ground, which were here and there of an amazing colour, purple and brown. A rain-cloud came up on the gusty wind and shed its slanting shower, and its shadow fell on the rounding slopes. He became aware of the form of the Heath beneath its verdure and colour. Between himself and the scene he felt an intimacy, as though he had known it always and would always know it. It amused him and filled him with a pleasant glee, which, when it passed, left him shy for the encounter with the famous Froitzheim, the arbiter of his immediate fortunes. VI EDGAR FROITZHEIM AND OTHERS VERY bright was the brass on Mr. Froitzheim's front door, very bright the face of the smiling maid who opened it. Mendel blushed and stammered inaudibly. "Will you come in?" said the maid, "and I will ask Mr. Froitzheim." She left Mendel in the hall and disappeared. This was a very large house, marvellously clean and light and airy. The wallpaper and the woodwork were white. On the stairs was a brilliant blue carpet. Through the window at the end of the passage were seen trees and a vast panorama of London--roofs, chimneys, steeples, domes--under a shifting pall of blue smoke. The maid went into the studio and told Mr. Froitzheim that a boy was waiting for him--a boy who looked like an Italian. She thought he might be selling images, and he had a package under his arm. Mr. Froitzheim told her to bring the visitor in. He was arranging draperies, Persian and Indian coats, yellow and red and blue, and he did not look up when Mendel was shown in. He was a little dark Jew, neat and dapper in figure and very sprucely dressed, but so Oriental that he looked out of place in Western clothes. But that impression was soon lost in Mendel's awe of the studio. Here was a place where real pictures were painted. There were easels, a table full of paints, an etching plant, a model's throne, a lay figure, pictures on the walls, stacks of pictures behind the door, and the little man standing there, fingering the silks, was a real artist. "Hullo, boy!" said Mr. Froitzheim. "M-Mendel Kühler." "Something to show me, eh?" "Ye-yes. Pictures." "What did you say your name was?" "Kühler. Mendel Kühler." "Oh yes. I remember. You know Maurice Birnbaum?" "No."