"So you keep a little private precipice here," I said.
"No, my dear," he returned; "you mistake. It is a Jacob's ladder,—or will be in one moment more."
He gave me his hand, and led me down.
"This is quite a banqueting-hall, Percivale!" I cried, looking round me.
"It shall be, the first time I get a thousand pounds for a picture," he returned.
"How grand you talk!" I said, looking up at him with some wonder; for big words rarely came out of his mouth.
"Well," he answered merrily, "I had two hundred and seventy-five for the last."
"That's a long way off a thousand," I returned, with a silly sigh.
"Quite right; and, therefore, this study is a long way off a banqueting-hall."
There was literally nothing inside the seventeen feet cube except one chair, one easel, a horrible thing like a huge doll, with no end of joints, called a lay figure, but Percivale called it his bishop; a number of pictures leaning their faces against the walls in attitudes of grief that their beauty was despised and no man would buy them; a few casts of legs and arms and faces, half a dozen murderous-looking weapons, and a couple of yards square of the most exquisite tapestry I ever saw.