'I wonder if it is possible to paint what one doesn't like, to take one's models as models, and only know them for the hours during which they sit to you in this attitude or that. I don't believe that it is. Much of our bad painting comes from respectable people thinking that they can soil their hands with paint and not let the dye sink into their innermost selves. Do you know that you are the only man of my own world that I ever see, or have seen for years now? People call me eccentric; I am only logical. You can't paint the things I paint, and live in a Hampstead villa. You must come and see me some day: will you take the address? 3 Somervell Street, Islington. It's not much like a studio. However, there's "Collins's" at hand, and I live there a good deal, you know. I lived in the Hampstead Road for some time on account of the "Bedford." But "Collins's" suits me and my models better.' He broke off with an ambiguous laugh, flung his last stone into the water, and jumped up, as if to end the conversation. Something in the way he spoke made me feel vaguely uneasy, but I was used to his exaggerations, his way of inventing as he went along. Was I, after all, any nearer to his secret, to himself as he really was? Waydelin went back to London and I to Russia, which I shall always remember, after that terrible summer under the gold and green domes of Moscow, as the hottest country in which I have ever been. When I came back to London I thought of Waydelin, made plan after plan to visit him, when one evening in November I received a brief note in his handwriting, asking me if I would come and see him at once, as he was very ill, and wanted to see me on a matter of business. I started immediately after dinner and got to Islington a little after nine. The street was one of those drab, hopeless streets to which a Russian observer has lately attributed the 'spleen' from which all Englishmen are thought to suffer. There was a row of houses on each side of the way, every house exactly like every other house, each with its three steps leading to the door, its bow window on one side, its strip of dingy earth in which there were a few dusty stalks between the lowest step and the railing, the paint for the most part peeling off the door, the bell-handle generally hanging out from its hole in the wall. I rang at No. 3. I had to wait for some time, and then the door was opened by an impudent-looking servant girl in a very untidy dress. I asked for Waydelin. 'Mrs. Waydelin, did you say?' said the girl, leering at me; then, calling over my head to the driver of a four-wheeler which just then drew up at the door, 'Wait five minutes, will you?' she turned to me again: 'Mr. Waydelin? I don't know if you can see him.' I told her impatiently that I had come by appointment, and she held the door open for me to come in. She knocked at a room on the first floor. 'Come in,' said a shrill voice that I did not know, and I went in.