"This is England, a free country where we lock into tiny prisons for our amusement the swiftest of God's creatures, birds, squirrels, rabbits, mice, fishes. You are silhouetted against a background of incongruous foreign shells strewn on a zinc floor: the nightmare of a mad conchologist. What tenderness, what beauty in the cowslips and primroses which encircle your prison and almost hide the iron grating--but not quite. The rapture of Spring is in them. They bloom, they bloom, every bud is opening. The contrast between their joyous immobility and your enforced immobility is complete. Nothing remains to you, to you once swift, once beautiful, once free, nothing remains to you in your corpulent despair except--the pleasures of the table." M. leaned back exhausted, trembling a little. "It is certainly a work of the imagination," I hazarded, "if you can read all that into it." "Giles, my good fellow, confine yourself to your own sphere, how to keep in life against my will and all laws of humanity my miserable worn out carcase. That is not a work of the imagination. It is the work of close and passionate observation, observation so close, and of such integrity that it fears nothing, evades nothing. It is tremendous." There was a moment's silence. I was a little hurt. I knew I was ignorant about art, but after all I had brought the picture to M.'s notice. "How old is she?" "Nineteen." "I've never had a pupil, but if I could live a few months longer I would take her. I suppose she's starving. I nearly starved at her age. I'll give her a hundred for it, and I'll see to its future. Send her round here to-morrow morning." He scrawled and flung me a cheque for a hundred guineas. "Now, understand," I said, "I will bring the girl to see you to-morrow on one condition only, that you buy her husband's 'Last Farewell,' and 'The dawn of love' for fifty pounds each. They are in this portfolio--and 'The Goldfish' by his wife for five. Is that a bargain?" "If you say so it is. You always get your own way. I suppose he's jealous of her." "He's just beginning to be, and he doesn't do things by halves."