He stood before the young man, urgent, paternal, and so imbued with the importance of his mission that his face stretched to a ludicrous length of dismay when Stanwell, administering a good-humoured push to his shoulder, cried gaily: "My dear fellow, it will make my price rise still higher when the lady hears I'm too busy to take any orders at present--and that I'm actually obliged to turn you out now because I'm expecting a sitter!" It was part of Shepson's business to have a quick ear for the note of finality, and he offered no resistance to Stanwell's friendly impulsion; but on the threshold he paused to murmur, with a regretful glance at the denuded studio: "You could haf done it, Mr. Sdanwell--you could haf done it!" II KATE ARRAN was Stanwell's sitter; but the janitor had hardly filled the stove when she came in to say that she could not sit. Caspar had had a bad night: he was depressed and feverish, and in spite of his protests she had resolved to fetch the doctor. Care sat on her usually tranquil features, and Stanwell, as he offered to go for the doctor, wished he could have caught in his picture the wide gloom of her brow. There was always a kind of Biblical breadth in the expression of her emotions, and today she suggested a text from Isaiah. "But you're not busy?" she hesitated; in the full voice which seemed tuned to a solemn rhetoric. "I meant to be--with you. But since that's off I'm quite unemployed." She smiled interrogatively. "I thought perhaps you had an order. I met Mr. Shepson rubbing his hands on the landing." "Was he rubbing his hands? Well, it was not over me. He says that from the style of my pictures he doesn't suppose I want to sell." She looked at him superbly. "Well, do you?" He embraced his bleak walls in a circular gesture. "Judge for yourself!" "Ah, but it's splendidly furnished!" "With rejected pictures, you mean?" "With ideals!" she exclaimed in a tone caught from her brother, and which would have been irritating to Stanwell if it had not been moving. He gave a slight shrug and took up his hat; but she interposed to say that if it didn't make any difference she would prefer to have him go and sit with poor Caspar, while she ran for the doctor and did some household errands by the way. Stanwell divined in her request the need for a brief respite from Caspar, and though he shivered at the thought of her facing the cold in the scant jacket which had been her only wear since he had known her, he let her go without a protest, and betook himself to Arran's studio.