Nobody had been known to see Doome at work. It was said that some beautiful women could have said things, and they would. But they would not. Yet his exquisite craftsmanship, the wondrous musical rhythm of his line and the quaint and rather morbid fancy of the subjects that came from his pen, together with a certain uncanniness of imagination, continued to pour forth masterpieces in black and white, startling the world of art and delighting the lovers of his genius. It was significantly whispered that he never worked except at dead of night, with the great candles lit, and all the old-world glass lustres that hung from the ceiling aglow with a hundred lights; it was then, said the traffickers in scandal, he came out to the practice of his art in a silken dressing-gown--the most beautiful woman of London sitting to him to snatch a little of immortality. The scandal grew. Society wrangled for him. “Lord of Furnishments” (writes Bartholomew Doome about this time, the summer being at wane, to Mr. Pompey Malahide)--“the air of this city of London is stifling me; the very sins of the town are grown banal, commonplace. I must to Paris. I leave no address for three months; but a telegram to the Hotel Albe will be seen within three days. The town is grown an empty caldron--you yourself had best get away with your lovely daughters to some gayer city of fresh air and to change of cheerful small vices and reflecting shop-windows.... But you will go, whether I advise or not. Meanwhile I am letting the studio to the Honourable Ponsonby Ffolliott, only son and heir to Lord Wyntwarde of Cavil, until the twenty-seventh of September. It will take three full days to rid it of the multifarious scents upon him, and to lay the echoes of his yaw.... Can I procure you fal-lals of price for Miss Mary, or adornments to mar the beauty of Miss Judith? Tush! I speak cant. It is all nonsense about painting the rose. Why do beautiful women wear clothes if so? And what a noise would be in Fleet Street, if the roses came out wholly without adornment! Fancy thyself, Lord of Furnishments, blushing like peony, taking thy Johnsonian walks abroad, unbedecked and unadorned--not, as now, almost wholly hidden! Thou wouldst be fantastically wonderful indeed, who art never wholly devoid of fantasy. The ladies might come out better; but naughtiness would the more shamefully abound. Personally, I am not against the rose; but the gods have ordered the painting. So be it paint.