The door being opened by a string, Donna Tullia and Del Ferice entered, and mounting half-a-dozen more steps, found themselves in the studio, a spacious room with a window high above the floor, half shaded by a curtain of grey cotton.  In one corner an iron stove gave out loud cracking sounds, pleasant to hear on the damp winter’s morning, and the flame shone red through chinks of the rusty door.  A dark-green carpet in passably good condition covered the floor; three or four broad divans, spread with oriental rugs, and two very much dilapidated carved chairs with leathern seats, constituted the furniture; the walls were hung with sketches of heads and figures; half-finished portraits stood upon two easels, and others were leaning together in a corner; a couple of small tables were covered with colour-tubes, brushes, and palette-knives; mingled odours of paint, varnish, and cigarette-smoke pervaded the air; and, lastly, upon a high stool before one of the easels, his sleeves turned up to the elbow, and his feet tucked in upon a rail beneath him, sat Anastase Gouache himself.

He was a man of not more than seven-and-twenty years, with delicate pale features, and an abundance of glossy black hair.  A small and very much pointed moustache shaded his upper lip, and the extremities thereof rose short and perpendicular from the corners of his well-shaped mouth.  His eyes were dark and singularly expressive, his forehead low and very broad; his hands were sufficiently nervous and well knit, but white as a woman’s, and the fingers tapered delicately to the tips.  He wore a brown velvet coat more or less daubed with paint, and his collar was low at the throat.

He sprang from his high stool as Donna Tullia and Del Ferice entered, his palette and mahl-stick in his hand, and made a most ceremonious bow; whereat Donna Tullia laughed gaily.

“Well, Gouache,” she said familiarly, “what have you been doing?”

Anastase motioned to her to come before his canvas and contemplate the portrait of herself upon which he was working.  It was undeniably good—­a striking figure in full-length, life-size, and breathing with Donna Tullia’s vitality, if also with something of her coarseness.

“Ah, my friend,” remarked Del Ferice, “you will never be successful until you take my advice.”

“I think it is very like,” said Donna Tullia, thoughtfully.

“You are too modest,” answered Del Ferice.  “There is the foundation of likeness, but it lacks yet the soul.”

“Oh, but that will come,” returned Madame Mayer.  Then turning to the artist, she added in a more doubtful voice, “Perhaps, as Del Ferice says, you might give it a little more expression—­what shall I say?—­more poetry.”