"Even more," he answered. "I found her ideas of art so wide, as well as just and accurate, that I was puzzled to think where she had had opportunity of developing them. I questioned her about it, and found she was in the habit of going, as often as she could spare time, to the National Gallery, where her custom was, she said, not to pass from picture to picture, but keep to one until it formed itself in her mind,--that is the expression she used, explaining herself to mean, until she seemed to know what the painter had set himself to do, and why this was and that was which she could not at first understand. Clearly, without ever having taken a pencil in her hand, she has educated herself to a keen perception of what is demanded of a true picture. Of course the root of it lies in her musical development.--There," he cried suddenly, as we came opposite a paved passage, "that is the place I saw her go down." "Then you do think the girl with the beer-jug was Miss Clare, after all?" "Not in the least. I told you I could not separate them in my mind." "Well, I must say, it seems odd. A girl like that and Miss Clare! Why, as often as you speak of the one, you seem to think of the other." "In fact," he returned, "I am, as I say, unable to dissociate them. But if you had seen the girl, you would not wonder. The likeness was absolutely complete." "I believe you do consider them one and the same; and I am more than half inclined to think so myself, remembering what Judy said." "Isn't it possible some one who knows Miss Clare may have seen this girl, and been misled by the likeness?" "But where, then, does Miss Clare live? Nobody seems to know." "You have never asked any one but Mrs. Morley." "You have yourself, however, given me reason to think she avoids the subject. If she did live anywhere hereabout, she would have some cause to avoid it." I had stopped to look down the passage. "Suppose," said Roger, "some one were to come past now and see Mrs. Percivale, the wife of the celebrated painter, standing in Tottenham Court Road beside the swing-door of a corner public-house, talking to a young man." "Yes; it might have given occasion for scandal," I said. "To avoid it, let us go down the court and see what it is like." "It's not a fit place for you to go into." "If it were in my father's parish, I should have known everybody in it." "You haven't the slightest idea what you are saying." "Come, anyhow, and let us see what the place is like," I insisted.