"Come in," he said. "I'd just finished. I've been working rather hard and haven't spoken to a soul for three days. You must forgive me if I don't seem very intelligent." They went in and he made tea for them, hardly ever taking his eyes off Morrison. He said pointedly to Mitchell:-- "So you came down to the East End to find me." Clowes explained:-- "I'm a stranger to London and had never seen the docks, you know." "I have never seen the docks either, though I live so near," said he. Then, catching Morrison glancing in the direction of his easel, he turned his work for her to see, almost ignoring the others. Afterwards he produced drawings for her to see, and he seemed entirely bent on pleasing her, which so embarrassed her that, when she could escape his gaze, she looked imploringly over at the others. They could not help her, and he went on until he had shown her every piece of work in the studio. Whenever she spoke, shyly and diffidently, as though she knew her opinion was of no value, he gave a queer little grunt of triumph, and his eyes glittered as he looked over at Mitchell, as though to say that he too knew how to treat the "top-knots" and to please them. X MORRISON A FEW days later he wired to Morrison at the Detmold to ask her to sit for him. She made no reply and did not come. Very well then: he would not budge. He would only approach Mitchell again through the "top-knots," who lived in a portion of Mitchell's world that had hitherto been closed to him. It promised new adventure, and he was so eager for it that he would not enter upon any other outside his work. The days went by and he began a portrait of his mother, with which he intended to make his first appearance at an important exhibition. Golda sat dressed in her best on the throne, and tried vainly to soothe him as he cursed and stamped and wept over his difficulties: "I can't do it! I can't do it!" he wailed. "I'm a fool, a blockhead, a pig! If I could only do one little thing more to it I could make it a great picture." "You are always the same," said Golda. "In Austria, when you were a little boy, the soldiers made you a uniform like their own. They used to call you the Captain, and they saluted you in the street, only they forgot to give you any boots, and when the soldiers marched by, you stamped and roared because you were not allowed to go with them, and I could not make you understand that you were not a real captain." "But I am a real artist," he growled. "You'll never make me understand that I am not a real artist." "Nothing good was ever done in a hurry," said she. "If you run so fast you will break your head against a wall." "I shall paint many portraits of you, for I shall never be satisfied. You may as well sit here with your hands folded as over there in the kitchen. If I'm not careful your hands will grow all over the picture. I have put such a lot of work into them."