e said lightly; then, passing his
arm through mine: "Come and see the rest of the house."

He showed it to me with a kind of naive suburban pride: the bath-rooms,
the speaking-tubes, the dress-closets, the trouser-presses--all the
complex simplifications of the millionaire's domestic economy. And
whenever my wonder paid the expected tribute he said, throwing out his
chest a little: "Yes, I really don't see how people manage to live
without that."

Well--it was just the end one might have foreseen for him. Only he was,
through it all and in spite of it all--as he had been through, and in
spite of, his pictures--so handsome, so charming, so disarming, that
one longed to cry out: "Be dissatisfied with your leisure!" as once one
had longed to say: "Be dissatisfied with your work!"

But, with the cry on my lips, my diagnosis suffered an unexpected check.

"This is my own lair," he said, leading me into a dark plain room at
the end of the florid vista. It was square and brown and leathery: no
"effects"; no bric-a-brac, none of the air of posing for reproduction
in a picture weekly--above all, no least sign of ever having been used
as a studio.

The fact brought home to me the absolute finality of Jack's break with
his old life.

"Don't you ever dabble with paint any more?" I asked, still looking
about for a trace of such activity.

"Never," he said briefly.

"Or water-colour--or etching?"

His confident eyes grew dim, and his cheeks paled a little under their
handsome sunburn.

"Never think of it, my dear fellow--any more than if I'd never touched
a brush."

And his tone told me in a flash that he never thought of anything else.

I moved away, instinctively embarrassed by my unexpected discovery; and
as I turned, my eye fell on a small picture above the mantel-piece--the
only object breaking the plain oak panelling of the room.

"Oh, by Jove!" I said.

It was a sketch of a donkey--an old tired donkey, standing in the rain
under a wall.

"By Jove--a Stroud!" I cried.

He was silent; but I felt him close behind me, breathing a little
quickly.

"What a wonder! Made with a dozen lines--but on everlasting
foundations. You lucky chap, where did you get it?"

He answered slowly: "Mrs. Stroud gave it to me."

"Ah--I didn't know you even knew the Strouds. He was such an inflexible
hermit."

"I didn't--till after.... She sent for me to paint him when he was
dead."

"When he was dead? You?"

I must have l