I used to have a tall strip of looking-glass leaning against my wall; for
though I didn't use models much, it's awfully useful to go to Nature for
odd bits now and then, and I've sketched myself in that glass, oh,
hundreds of times! We must have been standing in front of it, for all at
once I saw the eyes at the bottom of his pits looking rigidly over my
shoulder. Without moving his eyes from the glass, and scarcely moving his
lips, he muttered:

"Get me a pair of gloves, get me a pair of gloves." It was a funny thing to ask for; but I got him a pair of my gloves from a
drawer. His hands were shaking so that he could hardly get them on, and
there was a little glistening of sweat on his face, that looked like the
salt that dries on you when you've been bathing in the sea. Then I
turned, to see what it was that he was looking so earnestly and
profoundly at in the mirror. I saw nothing except just the pair of us, he
with my gloves on. He stepped aside, and slowly drew the gloves off. I think _I_ could have
bullied _him_ just then. He turned to me. "Did that look all right to you?" he asked. "Why, my dear chap, whatever ails you?" I cried. "I suppose," he went on, "you couldn't photograph me to-night--now?" I could have done, with magnesium, but I hadn't a scrap in the place. I
told him so. He was looking round my studio. He saw my camera standing in
a corner. "Ah!" he said. He made a stride towards it. He unscrewed the lens, brought it to the
lamp, and peered attentively through it, now into the air, now at his
sleeve and hand, as if looking for a flaw in it. Then he replaced it, and
pulled up the collar of his dressing-gown as if he was cold. "Well, another night of it," he muttered; "but," he added, facing
suddenly round on me, "if your appointment was to meet your God Himself,
you must photograph me at ten to-morrow morning!" "All right," I said, giving in (for he seemed horribly ill). "Draw up to
the stove and have a drink of something and a smoke." "I neither drink nor smoke," he replied, moving towards the door. "Sit down and have a chat, then," I urged; for I always like to be decent
with fellows, and it was a lonely sort of place, that yard. He shook his head. "Be ready by ten o'clock in the morning," he said; and he passed down my
stairs and crossed the yard to his studio without even having said "Good
night." Well, he was at my door again at ten o'clock in the morning, and I
photographed him. I made three exposures; but the plates were some that
I'd had in the place for some time, and they'd gone off and fogged in the
developing. "I'm awfully sorry," I said; "but I'm going out this afternoon, and will
get some more, and we'll have another shot in the morning." One after the other, he was holding the negatives up to the light and
examining them. Presently he put them down quietly, leaning them
methodically up against the edge of the developing-bath. "Never mind. It doesn't matter. Thank you," he said; and left me. After that, I didn't see him for weeks; but at nights I could see the
light of his roof-window, shining through the wreathing river-mists, and
sometimes I heard him moving about, and the muffled knock-knocking of his
hammer on marble. II

Of course I did see him again, or I shouldn't be telling you all this. He
came to my door, just as he had done before, and at about the same time
in the evening. He hadn't come to be photographed this time, but for all
that it was something about a camera--something he wanted to know. He'd
brought two books with him, big books, printed in German. They were on
Light, he said, and Physics (or else it was Psychics--I always get those
two words wrong). They were full of diagrams and equations and figures;
and, of course, it was all miles above my head. He talked a lot about "hyper-space," whatever that is; and at first I
nodded, as if I knew all about it. But he very soon saw that I didn't,
and he came down to my level again. What he'd come to ask me was this:
Did I know anything, of my own experience, about things "photographing
through"? (You know the kind of thing: a name that's been painted out on
a board, say, comes up in the plate.) Well, as it happened, I _had_ once photographed a drawing for a fellow,
and the easel I had stood it on had come up through the picture; and I
knew by the way Benlian nodded that that was the kind of thing he meant. "More," he said. I told him I'd once seen a photograph of a man with a bowler hat on, and
the shape of his crown had showed through the hat. "Yes, yes," he said, musing; and then he asked: "Have you ever heard of
things not photographing at all?" But I couldn't tell him anything about that; and off he started again,
about Light and Physics and so on. Then, as soon as I could get a word
in, I said, "But, of course, the camera isn't Art." (Some of my
miniatures, you understand, were jolly nice little things.) "No--no," he murmured absently; and then abruptly he said: "Eh? What's
that? And what the devil do _you_ know about it?" "Well," said I, in a dignified sort of way, "considering that for ten
years I've been--"

"Chut!... Hold your tongue," he said, turning away. There he was, talking to me again, just as if I'd asked him in to bully
me. But you've got to be decent to a fellow when he's in your own place;
and by-and-by I asked him, but in a cold, off-hand sort of way, how his
own work was going on. He turned to me again. "Would you like to see it?" he asked. "_Aha_!" thought I, "he's got to a sticking-point with his work! It's all
very well," I thought, "for you to sniff at my miniatures, my friend, but
we all get stale on our work sometimes, and the fresh eye, even of a
miniature-painter ..."

"I shall be glad if I can be of any help to you," I answered, still a bit
huffish, but bearing no malice. "Then come," he said. We descended and crossed the timber-yard, and he held his door open for
me to pass in. It was an enormous great place, his studio, and all full of mist; and the
gallery that was his bedroom was up a little staircase at the farther
end. In the middle of the floor was a tall structure of scaffolding, with
a stage or two to stand on; and I could see the dim ghostly marble figure
in the gloom. It had been jacked up on a heavy base; and as it would have
taken three or four men to put it into position, and scarcely a stranger
had entered the yard since I had been there, I knew that the figure must
have stood for a long time. Sculpture's weary, slow work. Benlian was pottering about with a taper at the end of a long rod; and
suddenly the overhead gas-ring burst into light. I placed myself before
the statue--to criticise, you know. Well, it didn't seem to me that he needed to have turned up his nose at
my ivories, for I didn't think much of his statue--except that it was a
great, lumping, extraordinary piece of work. It had an outstretched arm
that, I remember thinking, was absolutely misshapen--disproportioned,
big enough for a giant, ridiculously out of drawing.