Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/107

Rh cigarette. When he rolled a new one and had returned the flat, shabby, red leather case to a pocket, he would get up, open the stove door and pick up a piece of coke—one whose lower half was scarlet and its upper still black—between his finger and thumb, and, holding it calmly to the cigarette, suck in a light with a single inhalation, tossing the coke to its place and re-seating himself upon his tabouret, completely unaware of the amused pairs of eyes that watched quizzically to see his brow pucker if he burnt himself.

Wladislaw was his first name; naturally he had another by which he was generally known, but it is useless to record a second set of Polish syllables for the reader to struggle with, so I leave it alone. His first name is pronounced Vladislav as nearly as one may write it; and this is to be remembered, for I prefer to retain the correct spelling. He had been working quite a fortnight in the studio before the day when I strolled in and noticed him, and I do not think that up till then any one had the excitement of his acquaintance.

One or two sketch-books contained hasty and furtive pencil splashes which essayed the picturesqueness of his features; but he was notably shy, and if he observed any one to be regarding him with the unmistakable measuring eye of the sketcher, he would frown and dip behind the canvas on his easel with the silly sensitiveness of a. At the dingy crèmerie where he ate herrings, marines—chiefly with a knife—the curious glances of other déjeuneurs annoyed him extremely; which was absurd, of course, for as a rule no artist objects to being made the victim of a brother's brush. He would colour—I was going to write, like a girl, but why not like the boy that he was?—when the lively Louise, who changed the plates, or swept the knife and fork of such as did not know the habits of the place back on the crumby