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Rh fore Mrs. Perry, who lay back in her chair and looked, without other comment than a desire to look at each drawing longer than Basil seemed to expect.

They were nearly all in black and white; here and there a few had touches of colour; all were done with apparent economy of means, with hard simple lines which made a curious effect of life, brutal or pathetic. The subjects helped this effect. They were studies of the life of the city, generally in its rougher aspects. A street-girl and a man sitting at a table in a bare café; two tramps on a bench in the park; a chorus-girl, singing; a vaudeville dancer; a girl lying on a bed, smoking opium; a negro drinking-place; a scene from a Japanese play, a man seated in the middle of the stage committing hara-kiri; the audience at the Chinese theatre, a row of laughing faces; the Italian puppet-show; an East Side café, full of Slavic types; some Eastern women doing the danse du ventre; street scenes in the Jewish and Syrian quarters; a Bowery bartender; some immigrants at the Barge Office; a row of men at a gambling-table; a drunken group at the Haymarket.

"What life you put into them!" said Mrs. Perry as he laid the last one down, and she shivered.

"You don't like that kind of life?" Basil asked, laughing.