of course, by now, and sour as always. But Hannah nudged her friend, and looked anxiously at the young fellow who had come with Norm. Dubbo himself was overtaken by a sudden sadness. An Eyetalian boy called Fiddle Paganini was finishing singing a number, in the blond wig and black net stockings he had brought for that purpose in a port. Hannah said in a loud voice, "Alf can do better than sing and dance. Take it from me. Can't you, Alf?" She did not look exactly at him, and stuck her tongue into her cheek, because she was just a little bit nervous at what she was about to suggest. She turned to the young fellow in the corner. "You don't know what we got here, Humphrey." She was addressing the stranger in a voice louder still, in an accent that nobody had ever heard before. "Alf does oil paintings. Don't you, Alf? How about showing the pictures? That would be a real treat, and one that Mr Mortimer would appreciate and remember." Dubbo was struck by lightning right there in the brown lounge. Everyone was looking. Some of the queers were groaning and yawning. "Arr, yes, go on, Alf!" Norman Fussell added. Norm had returned conventionally clothed, and seated himself on his friend's lap, from which he had been dropped almost at once, because he was heavy. This piece of by-play, if of no other significance, forced Humphrey Mortimer's hand to reveal the second half of his face. Which Dubbo saw fully at last. Now the young man leaned forward, and said, "Yes, Alf, there is nothing I should like better than to see those paintings. If you would consider showing them." He spoke in tones so polite and flat they precluded arrogance, enthusiasm, irony, or any definite emotion. That was the way he had been taught, perhaps. To win confidence, without offending against taste by rousing hopes. Dubbo stood. Usually he could sense an ambush. Or was this the one evening when defences might be dropped? It was vanity that began to persuade him, stroking with the most insidious feathers. All that he was capable of expressing was soon suffocating in his chest, writhing in his belly, tingling in the tips of his fingers. He was looking down almost sardonically into the rather pale, lifeless eyes of Humphrey Mortimer, who was obviously unaware that he might have created an explosive situation. Until Dubbo was no longer able to endure that such ignorance should be allowed to exist. "Orright," he answered, furrily. He began to walk, or run, along the dark passage to his room, his hands stretched out brittle in front of him, to guard against something. He could not select quickly enough a couple of the paintings, dropped, and recovered them. Started back. At one point his right shoulder struck the wall, which threw him off. But he did arrive in the reeling lounge, where he propped the boards, on the floor, against a chair, in front of the guest of honour. The whole business was most unorthodox, it was implied by the majority of those present. And the paintings themselves. Some members of the company made it clear they would take no further part in anything so peculiar. But Humphrey Mortimer sat forward, disclosing through his eyes what he would not have allowed his mouth to attempt; he might have committed himself. Perhaps only Dubbo sensed that an undernourished soul was feeding as though it had never eaten before. The abo was very straight and aloof. "Yeeees," said the connoisseur, because it was time he made a remark, provided it was equivocal. Dubbo touched the corner of one board with his toe. "No," he contradicted. "These paintings are no good. I was still trying. Half of them is empty. That corner, see how dead it is? I did not know what to fill it with. I'll paint these out later on." He was still breathless. But from his vantage point he could afford to be contemptuous, not to say honest. "Even so," murmured Humphrey Mortimer. Possessed by the paintings, whether they were indifferent or not, he had grown completely passive. Nothing would control Dubbo's passion now. He ran back along the passage. The things in his pockets were flogging him. He brought paintings and paintings. They lit a bonfire in the mediocre room, the walls of which retreated from the blaze of colour. Although the gramophone continued to piddle manfully, it failed to extinguish even the edges of the fire. Some of the queers were taking their leave. Some of them had curled up. "Wonderful, ain't it, what a touch of paint will do?" Hannah said, and yawned. But in the roomful of dormant or murmurous people, it was the painter and his audience of one that mattered. They were in communication. Dubbo had just brought an offering of two pictures. Increasing sobriety suggested to him that he ought to withdraw. But he propped the paintings lovingly enough. The other sat forward. Since he had grasped the idiom, he was more deeply receptive. But, from habit or policy, would continue only lazily to smile his pleasure and acknowledgment. "Ah," he began intimately, for the painter alone, "Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?" "Yes!" The abo laughed gently. It was very like a courtship. "And the Angel of the Lord," Dubbo added, in the same caressing voice. He squatted down and almost touched with a finger the stiff, but effulgent figure. It had emerged completely from the chaos of spirit in which it had been born. In that it was so very recent, the paint still wet, the creator could not see his work as it must appear and remain. He could at least admire the feathery texture of the angel's wings as a problem overcome, while forgetting that a little boy on a molten morning had held a live cockatoo in his hands, and opened its feathers to look at their roots, and become involved in a mystery of down. Later perhaps, falling asleep, or waking, it might occur to the man how he had understood to render the essence of divinity. If he could have seen it, the work was already sufficient in itself. All the figures in the furnace were stiff but true. The fire was final. Neither time nor opinion could divert a single tongue of flame into a different shape. And the two actual men, watching the figures in the fiery furnace, were themselves touched with a heavenly dew which protected them momentarily from other voices and mortal dangers. It seemed that honesty must prevail. It was the visitor who broke out first. He shivered violently, and shook off the spell. His eyes could have been regretting a surrender. "You have got something here, Dubbo," he said, languidly, even cynically. It was as far as he had ever gone towards committing himself, and it made him nervous. The abo, too, was nervous, if not angry, as he gathered up what had become an extravagant effusion in paint. "What is this?" Humphrey Mortimer asked. "This big cartoon that you brought along last with 'The Fiery Furnace,' and didn't explain?" "That," said the painter, "is nothing. It is a drawing I might work from later on. I dunno, though." Now that he was stone cold, he bitterly regretted having brought out the drawing for "The Chariot." Bad enough "The Fiery Furnace." All was exposed and defenceless. "I like that particularly," said Mr Mortimer. "The big cartoon. It is most interesting. Let me look at it a moment." "No," said Dubbo. "I don't want. It is too late. Another time." Hurrying his paintings. "You promise, then?" persisted the other. "Yes, yes," said Dubbo. But his nostrils contradicted. As the fire that had been kindled in the lounge-room died, Norm's party began to break up. There was a kissing and a hugging. The queans were restoring their habitual atmosphere of crossed lines. While Dubbo carried off the last ember of true passion. Now he would be able to lock his door and trust the silence. But footsteps followed in the passage, half tentative, half confident. "Look here, Alf," Humphrey Mortimer began. It could not have been anybody else. "I want to suggest something," he said. He had followed the abo as far as his door. Although it was close in the passage, both men were shivering. Mr Mortimer, whose silhouette seldom fell short of perfect, was standing with his fists clenched in his trouser pockets, and his coat rucked up over a protruding bum. He looked ridiculous. "I will make you an offer for at least three of the paintings," he said. "Which I am very anxious to own." He named "The Fiery Furnace" and a couple of others. "And the drawing of the chariot-thing, when it has fulfilled its purpose. That is to say, when you have finished working from it." The young man mentioned a sum, quite the most respectable that had ever been named in Hannah's house of love. "No. No. Sorry," said Alf Dubbo. His voice could not have hacked further words out of his feelings. "Think it over, at least. It is for your own good, you know." Humphrey Mortimer pulled that one. He continued to smile, because life had taught him that his own way was easily bought. But Dubbo, who had laid himself open at certain moments during the evening, was no longer vulnerable. Since beginning to suspect he had been deceived, he had shrivelled right up, and nobody would coax him out again. "Paintings which nobody looks at might never have been painted, " the patron argued. "I will look at them," Dubbo said. "Good night," he said, "Mr Mortimer." And shut the door.