While she splashed colour on a window-pane he stood smoking Turkish tobacco and chewing ginger before one of the modelling easels that filled the middle of the studio. Here he "pottered" away, as he expressed it, at his modelling in bronze. For the most part it was human figure that he created out of "the depths of his soul," half or three parts life-size: armoured knights with banners, girls in old German dress with problematically outstretched arms, allegorical female forms likewise employed, heralds trumpeting, and now and again impressionist nudity, long, too-slim limbs, and nixie bodies wriggling off into mermaids' tails; ash-trays, finger-bowls, and other utilitarian articles. And all the time there hung or leaned against the walls, covered with dust, half-finished pictures and sketches of daring originality and riotous delight in colour, every one stamped with unpremeditated power and joyous ease in execution. There was a half-ruined chapel in a tropical forest, on the high altar of which a herd of monkeys were gambolling; in a monotonous desert background a group of stubborn-eyed camels drew round the dead body of a lion, sniffing it; best of all was the nude figure of a woman loaded with chains, her white limbs shining out in relief from a rugged barren rock, and round her head swooping a horde of red-eyed vultures. There was much else that showed restrained strength and wealth of imagination; but the woman in chains remained Lilly's favourite. One day she ventured to ask her master why he left all these things unfinished, instead of working them up for exhibitions. "Because I have to turn out pot-boilers, you unsuspecting angel," he replied, laughing, and slapped a clod of wet clay against the leg of the allegorical lady whom he had in hand; "because the world wants lamp-stands and flower-vases, but no immortal beauty, with mother-wit inside her body to boot; ... because there are manufacturers of imitation bronze wares who keep you from the workhouse; and because I am a chap with sound teeth who wants a few crusts of life to masticate after twenty years of fasting, and will hunt for once with the worshippers of Dionysus. Can you, with your five-o'clock tea soul, grasp that ...?" "But could you not at least finish the woman with the chains?" she urged. He broke into a shrill laugh of self-contempt, and threw himself full length on the fur-covered couch which stood in the most shadowed corner of the glass-walled room. Then he sprang up again and offered Lilly ginger out of the pot he always kept handy. She thanked him and pressed for an answer to her question. "Dear God! Have you no conception of how heavily loaded everyone is in this world with his own chains? Divine fire would have to descend from heaven and melt my handcuffs or the goddess herself must appear in the flesh, throw her clothes on that chair, and say, 'Here I am, dear sir. This is the body born from the foam.... Now, fire away; look and paint your fill.'"