The house was very quiet when they were all away. Merely to look into the drawing-room was enough to give any one a chill. The sense of emptiness where generally every corner was full, and silence where there were always so many voices, was very depressing. Mr. Sandford consoled himself by a very hard day’s work the first day of the absence of his family, getting on very well indeed, and making a great advance in the picture he was painting--a small picture intended for one of his oldest friends. In the evening, as he had nothing else to occupy him, he moved about the studio, not going into the other parts of the house at all, and amused himself by making a little study of the moonlight as it came in upon the plants in the conservatory. His house was in a quarter not fashionable, somewhere between St. John’s Wood and Regent’s Park, and consequently there was more room than is usual in London, a pretty garden and plenty of air. The effect of the moonlight and the black exaggerated shadows amused him. The thought passed through his mind that if perhaps he were one of the newfangled school which Jack’s friends believed in, he might turn that unreal scene which was so indubitable a fact into a picture and probably make a great success as an impressionist--an idea at which he smiled with a milder but not less genuine contempt than the young impressionist might have felt for Mr. Sandford’s school. He had half a mind to do it--to conceal his name and send it to one of the lesser exhibitions, so as afterwards to have a laugh at the young men, and prove to them how easy the trick was, and that any old fogey who took the trouble could beat them in their own way. Next morning, however, he threw the sketch into a portfolio, with a horror of the black and white extravagance which in the daylight offended his artist-eye, and which he had a suspicion was not so good after all, or so easy a proof of the facility of doing that sort of thing as he had supposed. And that day his work did not advance so quickly or so satisfactorily. He listened for the swing of the door at the other end of the passage which connected the studio with the house, though he knew well enough there was no one who could come to disturb him. There are days when it is so agreeable to be disturbed! And it was when he was painting in this languid way, and, as was natural, not at all pleasing himself with his work, that there suddenly and most distinctly came before him, as if some one had come in and said it, a thing--a fact--which strangely enough he had not even thought of before. When it first occurred to him his hand suddenly stopped work with an action of its own before the mind had time to influence it, and there was a sudden rush of heat to his head. He felt drops of moisture come out on his forehead; his heart for a second paused too. His whole being received a shock--a start. For the first moment he could scarcely make out what this extraordinary sudden commotion, for which his mind seemed only partially responsible, could be.