Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/121

Rh coolly to the end, and you had him useless, flurried, monosyllabic and distraught.

I had early learned this; so I stood pretty patiently, although in thin slippers, on our half-made road, a red clay slough by reason of much carting, and listened to half-intelligible fragments of bad German, from which I gleaned quite a good deal that I wanted to know. First of all, it seemed the studio had another door; one we had never seen: you made your way round the back of the sculptor's white powdery habitation, and discovered yourself opposite a little annexe where the artist kept his untidier properties, and the glass and china which served for any little refreshment he might be disposed to take in working hours. The door here had been opened by an untidy, half-dressed French woman, with her boots unbuttoned and a good deal of cigarette ash upon her high-braced bust; she appeared unaware of Wladislaw's arrival, for she came to the door to empty something, and he nearly received the contents of a small enamelled tin thing in his face.

A moment later, much shaken by the off-hand insolence of her remarks, he penetrated to the presence of Dufour himself, and was agreeably soothed by the painter s reception of him. Of Dufour's manner and remarks, or the appearance of his workshop, I could get no idea. He had a canvas, twelve feet by nine, upon an easel, and it seems he made a rapid  of his picture upon a smaller upright, and had a few masterly skirmishes with the fusain for the position of his Christ's head, begging the model to walk naturally up and down the studio, so as to expose unconsciously various attitudes of face.

During these saunterings Wladislaw should have come by some idea of his surroundings; but he was continually harassed and distracted by the movements of the woman in the unbuttoned boots, and seemed to have observed very little.