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By the fifth of August the weather was very warm, and on that day, while the Colonel sat straight and gossiped, Lyon opened for the sake of ventilation a little subsidiary door which led directly from his studio into the garden and sometimes served as an entrance and an exit for models and for visitors of the humbler sort, and as a passage for canvases, frames, packing-boxes and other professional gear. The main entrance was through the house and his own apartments, and this approach had the charming effect of admitting you first to a high gallery, from which a crooked picturesque staircase enabled you to descend to the wide, decorated, encumbered room. The view of this room, beneath them, with all its artistic ingenuities and the objects of value that Lyon had collected, never failed to elicit exclamations of delight from persons stepping into the gallery. The way from the garden was plainer and at once more practicable and more private. Lyon’s domain, in St. John’s Wood, was not vast, but when the door stood open of a summer’s day it offered a glimpse of flowers and trees, you smelt something sweet and you heard the birds. On this particular morning the side-door had been found convenient by an unannounced visitor, a youngish woman who stood in the room before the Colonel perceived her and whom he perceived before she was noticed by his friend. She was very quiet, and she looked from one of the men to the other. ‘Oh, dear, here’s another!’ Lyon exclaimed, as soon as his eyes rested on her. She belonged, in fact, to a somewhat importunate class–the model in search of employment, and she explained that she had ventured to come straight in, that way, because very often when she went to call upon gentlemen the servants played her tricks, turned her off and wouldn’t take in her name.

‘But how did you get into the garden?’ Lyon asked.

‘The gate was open, sir–the servants’ gate. The butcher’s cart was there.’

‘The butcher ought to have closed it,’ said Lyon.

‘Then you don’t require me, sir?’ the lady continued.

Lyon went on with his painting; he had given her a sharp look at first, but now his eyes lighted on her no more. The Colonel, however, examined her with interest. She was a person of whom you could scarcely say whether being young she looked old or old she looked young; she had at any rate evidently rounded several of the corners of life and had a face that was rosy but that somehow failed to suggest freshness. Nevertheless she was pretty and even looked as if at one time she might have sat for the complexion. She wore a hat with many feathers, a dress with many bugles, long black gloves, encircled with silver bracelets, and very bad shoes. There was something about her that was not exactly of the governess out of place nor completely of the actress seeking an engagement, but that savoured of an interrupted profession or even of a blighted career. She was rather soiled and tarnished, and after she had been in the room a few moments the air, or at any rate the nostril, became acquainted with a certain alcoholic waft. She was unpractised in the h, and when Lyon at last thanked her and said he didn’t want her–he was doing nothing for which she could be useful–she replied with rather a wounded manner, ‘Well, you know you ‘ave ‘ad me!’

‘I don’t remember you,’ Lyon answered.

‘Well, I daresay the people that saw your pictures do! I haven’t much time, but I thought I would look in.’

‘I am much obliged to you.’

‘If ever you should require me, if you just send me a postcard—-‘

‘I never send postcards,’ said Lyon.

‘Oh well, I should value a private letter! Anything to Miss Geraldine, Mortimer Terrace Mews, Notting ‘ill—-‘

‘Very good; I’ll remember,’ said Lyon.

Miss Geraldine lingered. ‘I thought I’d just stop, on the chance.’