Art, however, was looking up. He had sold several pictures lately. The morning mists on the road to success were clearing away, leaving to the view in a prospect distant tremulous and golden the mysterious city of attainment.
He would have whistled as he worked only that he was smoking.
Through the open windows came the pulse-like sound of the omnibuses in the King's Road, the sleigh bells of the hansoms, the rattle of the coster's barrow, and voices.
As he painted, the sounds outside brought before him the vision of the King's Road, Chelsea, where flaming June was also at work with her golden brush and palette of violet colours.
He saw in imagination the scarlet pyramids of strawberries in the shops. The blazing barrow of flowers all a-growing and a-blowing, the late-June morning crowd, and through the crowd wending its way the figure of a girl.
He was in love.
In the breast-pocket of his coat (on the heart side) lay a letter he had received by the early morning post. The handwriting was large and generous and careless, for no man living could tell the "m's" from the "w's," or the "t's" from the "l's." It ran somewhat to this effect:
"The Laurels, Highgate.
"Father is worrying dreadfully, and I want your advice. I think I will be in the King's Road to-morrow, and will call on you. Excuse this scrawl.—In wild haste,
"Fanny Lambert.
"How's the picture?"
Occasionally as he painted he touched his coat where the letter lay, as if to make sure of its presence.