Of course, this was an amend of sorts, but of a very silly sort. For could the man be such a fool as to think that while I might be generous and accommodating to a fault, my old friend would fall in with this charade?

“I think,” I said with considerable dignity, beginning to draw the robe away from my shoulders, “that when you want models, Mr. Hess, you had better pay for them.”

But my arm got no further than halfway down the coat-sleeve. For my eyes were held. Looking up at the sun makes you a little dizzy and your sight blotchy, but there was no doubt what I was seeing. That silly little Hess had run along the curb and as I watched was buttonholing Mr. Mycroft. I didn’t wait to struggle into my jacket but running down the steps went to where they stood together by the exit. I couldn’t hear what was being said but was sure I guessed. Yet, in a moment, I was again at a loss. For instead of Mr. Mycroft turning down the grotesque offer, beckoning to me, and going out of the gate, Mr. M. was coming toward me, and he and Hess were talking quite amicably. Of course, I could only conclude that Hess had been spinning some new kind of yarn but all I could do was to go right up to them and say, “Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me what you have arranged!”

I was still further bewildered when it was Mr. M. who answered, “I think Mr. Hess’s idea is excellent. If the picture is to be the success which he hopes, it should have contrast and, if I may put it in that way, significance—a picture with a story. Wasn’t that your telling phrase, Mr. Hess?”

Hess beamed: “Precisely, precisely! Mr. Mycroft is so instantly intuitive.” And the little fellow looked Mr. M. up and down with a mixture of surprise and complacency that I found very comic and sedative to my rightly ruffled feelings. Still I was quite in the dark as to what had happened to make the three of us so suddenly and so unexpectedly a happy family with—of all people—Mr. M. as the matchmaker. Hess, however, was bubbling over to tell me: