VERY bright was the brass on Mr. Froitzheim’s front door, very bright the face of the smiling maid who opened it. Mendel blushed and stammered inaudibly.
“Will you come in?” said the maid, “and I will ask Mr. Froitzheim.”
She left Mendel in the hall and disappeared. This was a very large house, marvellously clean and light and airy. The wallpaper and the woodwork were white. On the stairs was a brilliant blue carpet. Through the window at the end of the passage were seen trees and a vast panorama of London—roofs, chimneys, steeples, domes—under a shifting pall of blue smoke.
The maid went into the studio and told Mr. Froitzheim that a boy was waiting for him—a boy who looked like an Italian. She thought he might be selling images, and he had a package under his arm. Mr. Froitzheim told her to bring the visitor in. He was arranging draperies, Persian and Indian coats, yellow and red and blue, and he did not look up when Mendel was shown in. He was a little dark Jew, neat and dapper in figure and very sprucely dressed, but so Oriental that he looked out of place in Western clothes. But that impression was soon lost in Mendel’s awe of the studio. Here was a place where real pictures were painted. There were easels, a table full of paints, an etching plant, a model’s throne, a lay figure, pictures on the walls, stacks of pictures behind the door, and the little man standing there, fingering the silks, was a real artist.
“Hullo, boy!” said Mr. Froitzheim.
“M-Mendel Kühler.”
“Something to show me, eh?”
“Ye-yes. Pictures.”
“What did you say your name was?”
“Kühler. Mendel Kühler.”