Mr. Buckingham Smith, with Mr. Alfred Prince, was tenant of the studio at the back of No. 8.  He raised his hat as well as an occupied arm would allow.

“Come and wait in the studio, then,” he suggested bluntly.

“You know Mr. Cannon, don’t you?” said Marguerite, embarrassed.

George and Mr. Buckingham Smith had in fact been introduced to one another weeks earlier in the Grove by Mr. Haim.  Thereafter Mr. Buckingham Smith had, as George imagined, saluted George with a kind of jealous defiance and mistrust, and the acquaintance had not progressed.  Nor, by the way, had George’s dreams been realized of entering deeply into the artistic life of Chelsea.  Chelsea had been no more welcoming than Mr. Buckingham Smith.  But now Mr. Buckingham Smith grew affable and neighbourly.  Behind the man’s inevitable insistence that George should accompany Miss Haim into the studio was a genuine, eager hospitality.

The studio was lofty and large, occupying most of the garden space of No. 8.  Crimson rep curtains, hung on a thick, blackened brass rod, divided it into two unequal parts.  By the wall nearest the house a staircase ran up to a door high in the gable, which door communicated by a covered bridge with the second floor of No. 8, where the artists had bedrooms.  The arrangement was a characteristic example of the manner in which building was added to building in London contrary to the intention of the original laying-out, and George in his expert capacity wondered how the plans had been kept within the by-laws of the borough, and by what chicane the consent of the ground-landlord had been obtained.

Mr. Alfred Prince, whom also George knew slightly, was trimming a huge oil-lamp which depended by a wire from the scarcely visible apex of the roof.  When at length the natural perversity of the lamp had been mastered and the metal shade replaced, George got a general view of the immense and complex disorder of the studio.  It was obviously very dirty—­even in the lamplight the dust could be seen in drifts on the moveless folds of the curtains—­it was a pigsty; but it was romantic with shadowed spaces, and gleams of copper and of the pale arms of the etching-press, and glimpses of pictures; and the fellow desired a studio of his own!  He was glad, now, that Mr. Buckingham Smith had invited them in.  He had wanted to keep Marguerite Haim to himself; but it was worth while to visit the studio, and it was especially worth while to watch her under the illumination of the lamp.

“Lucky we have a clean tablecloth,” said Mr. Buckingham Smith, opening his packages and setting a table.  “Brawn, Miss Haim!  And beer, Miss Haim!  That is to say, Pilsener.  From the only place in Chelsea where you can get it.”