I watched the long white fingers that tapped softly for a minute on the table before she resumed.
"_Then_ he's all right," she said in a low and moved voice. "He was writing the _Vicarage_ then. I saw--oh, quite lots of him. He used to 'blow in,' as he called it, with a 'Hallo, Julia! I'm having rather a devil of a good time these days; writing a book that will make some of 'em sit up and take notice; I've done a quarter of it in three weeks; how's that for a little gentle occupation?' Yes, I saw quite a lot of him at thirty-three. I had a studio near Cremorne Road. It wasn't really a studio, but a sort of gutted top floor, big enough to have given a dance in, and my bed was behind a curtain that was drawn right across one end. I used to give him tea there--Patum Paperium sandwiches he liked--and he was sweet. Once I'd an illustration to do for some stupid story or other, about a sort of Sandow-and-Hackenschmidt all rolled into one, and do you know what he did? He looked at my drawing, took it to the window, and then laughed. 'I say, Julia, this will never do!' he said. 'When a man lifts a heavy thing like that he does it _from the earth_, you understand--you do everything that's worth doing from the earth. So you've got to see his feet are right. Anybody likely to come in here? No? Right; I don't mind you. Got anything heavy here? You get your paper and pencil.' And he stripped to the belt and picked up my sewing-machine and posed for me. He did...."
I seemed to see the scene in bright illumination, him in that upper room with the curtains drawn across one end, his jacket and shirt tossed on to a chair, his great torso stripped to the buff, the sewing-machine held aloft. She would be at her board or easel, sketching--pretending to sketch--I don't know what. He had merely said, "Anybody likely to come in? No? Right! I don't mind you!"
It was true. He hadn't minded her. Otherwise he would never have displayed himself so gloriously before her eyes.
"Did that illustration ever appear?" I asked without looking at her.
I knew without looking that she smiled as she shook her head.
"Not that one. You know it didn't. The first one was good enough for them."
And she still had the King Arthur sketch too.