"Do let us go and see him!" said Clowes, who had decided in her own mind that she was the third of the party and in the way. Morrison said nothing, and looked very solemn, as though she regarded the visit as an event--something to be half dreaded. She had a very charming air of diffidence, as though she were very happy and knew this to be an unusual and peculiar condition. Often she smiled to herself, and then seemed to shake the smile away, feeling perhaps that she, a slip of a girl, had no right to be amused by a world so vast and so varied. She had enjoyed herself. The ships had stirred her romantically, and she could not at all agree with Mitchell about painting them, for were they not works of art in themselves? They moved her in the same way, arresting her eyes and delighting them, and touching her emotions so that they began to creep and tickle their way through her whole being. . . . O wonderful world to contain so much delight! And it pleased her that the ships should start out of the squalor of the docks like lilies out of a dark pond. She smiled and shook the smile away when Mitchell spoke of Mendel Kühler. She remembered once meeting Mendel on the stairs at the Detmold. She had often noticed him--strange-looking, white-faced, romantic, with a look of suffering in his eyes that marked him out from all the other young men. . . . After she had passed him on the stairs she turned to look at him, and at the same moment he turned and she trembled and blushed, and her eyes shone as she hurried on her way. Mitchell had told her a great deal about him, and she had heard other people say that he was detestable, an ill-mannered egoist. She supposed he was so, for she rarely questioned what other people said, but he remained a clear figure for her, the romantic-looking young man who had looked back on the stairs. "We'll take him by surprise," said Mitchell, with a sudden qualm lest they should break in upon Mendel and Hetty Finch together. "If we told him he would hide all his work away and put on a white shirt and have flowers on the table, for he is terrified of ladies. He says they don't look like women to him." "I'm sure," said Clowes, "I don't want to look like a woman to any man." This was the most encouraging remark Mitchell had had from either during the day, and he decided that he was in love with Clowes. A brisk walk through narrow dingy streets brought them, with some help from the police, to the door of Issy's house. Mitchell knocked and a grimy little Jewess opened to them. "Mr. Mendel Kühler?" said Mitchell. "Upstairs to the top," replied the Jewess as she hurried away. They climbed the shabbily carpeted stairs and knocked at the door of the studio. Mendel opened it. He stood with a brush in his hand, blinking. He stared at Mitchell and then beyond him at Morrison.