come to ask me was this:
Did I know anything, of my own experience, about things "photographing
through"? (You know the kind of thing: a name that's been painted out on
a board, say, comes up in the plate.)

Well, as it happened, I _had_ once photographed a drawing for a fellow,
and the easel I had stood it on had come up through the picture; and I
knew by the way Benlian nodded that that was the kind of thing he meant.

"More," he said.

I told him I'd once seen a photograph of a man with a bowler hat on, and
the shape of his crown had showed through the hat.

"Yes, yes," he said, musing; and then he asked: "Have you ever heard of
things not photographing at all?"

But I couldn't tell him anything about that; and off he started again,
about Light and Physics and so on. Then, as soon as I could get a word
in, I said, "But, of course, the camera isn't Art." (Some of my
miniatures, you understand, were jolly nice little things.)

"No--no," he murmured absently; and then abruptly he said: "Eh? What's
that? And what the devil do _you_ know about it?"

"Well," said I, in a dignified sort of way, "considering that for ten
years I've been--"

"Chut!... Hold your tongue," he said, turning away.

There he was, talking to me again, just as if I'd asked him in to bully
me. But you've got to be decent to a fellow when he's in your own place;
and by-and-by I asked him, but in a cold, off-hand sort of way, how his
own work was going on. He turned to me again.

"Would you like to see it?" he asked.

"_Aha_!" thought I, "he's got to a sticking-point with his work! It's all
very well," I thought, "for you to sniff at my miniatures, my friend, but
we all get stale on our work sometimes, and the fresh eye, even of a
miniature-painter ..."

"I shall be glad if I can be of any help to you," I answered, still a bit
huffish, but bearing no malice.

"Then come," he said.

We descended and crossed the timber-yard, and he held his door open for
me to pass in.

It was an enormous great place, his studio, and all full of mist; and the
gallery that was his bedroom was up a little staircase at the farther
end. In the middle of the floor was a tall structure of scaffolding, with
a stage or two to stand on; and I could see the dim ghostly marble figure
in the gloom. It had been jacked up on a heavy base; and as it would have
taken three or four men to put it into position, and scarcely a stranger
had entered the yard since I had bee