At grimy Vauxhall he crossed the river, and pursued his course along Grosvenor Road.  Rain had begun to fall, and the driving of the wind obliged him to walk with the umbrella before his face.  Happening to glance ahead, when not far from home, he saw, at a distance of twenty yards, a man whom he took for Norbert Franks.  The artist was coming toward him, but suddenly he turned round about, and walked rapidly away, disappearing in a moment down a side street.  Franks it certainly was; impossible to mistake his figure, his gait; and Warburton felt sure that the abrupt change of direction was caused by his friend’s desire to avoid him.  At the end of the byway he looked, and there was the familiar figure, marching with quick step into the rainy distance.  Odd! but perhaps it simply meant that Franks had not seen him.

He reached home, wrote some letters, made preparations for leaving town by an early train next morning, and dined with his customary appetite.  Whilst smoking his after-dinner pipe, he thought again of that queer little incident in Grosvenor Road, and resolved of a sudden to go and see Franks.  It still rained, so he took advantage of a passing hansom, and drove in a few minutes to the artist’s lodging on the south side of Battersea Park.  The door was opened to him by the landlady, who smiled recognition.

“No, sir, Mr. Franks isn’t at home, and hasn’t been since after breakfast this morning.  And I don’t understand it; because he told me last night that he’d be working all day, and I was to get meals for him as usual.  And at ten o’clock the model came—­that rough man he’s putting into the new picture, you know, sir; and I had to send him away, when he’d waited more than an hour.”

Warburton was puzzled.

“I’ll take my turn at waiting,” he said.  “Will you please light the gas for me in the studio?”

The studio was merely, in lodging-house language, the first floor front; a two-windowed room, with the advantage of north light.  On the walls hung a few framed paintings, several unframed and unfinished, water-colour sketches, studies in crayon, photographs, and so on.  In the midst stood the easel, supporting a large canvas, the artist’s work on which showed already in a state of hopeful advancement.  “The Slummer” was his provisional name for this picture; he had not yet hit upon that more decorous title which might suit the Academy catalogue.  A glance discovered the subject.  In a typical London slum, between small and vile houses, which lowered upon the narrow way, stood a tall, graceful, prettily-clad young woman, obviously a visitant from other spheres; her one hand carried a book, and the other was held by a ragged, cripple child, who gazed up at her with a look of innocent adoration.  Hard by stood a miserable creature with an infant at her breast, she too adoring the representative of health, wealth, and charity.  Behind, a costermonger, out of work, sprawled on the curbstone, viewing the invader; he, with resentful eye, his lip suggestive of words unreportable.  Where the face of the central figure should have shone, the canvas still remained blank.