Roderick's studio was behind, in the basement; a large, empty room, with the paper peeling off the walls.

This represented, in the fashion of fifty years ago, a series of small fantastic landscapes of a hideous pattern, and the young sculptor had presumably torn it away in great scraps, in moments of aesthetic exasperation.

On a board in a corner was a heap of clay, and on the floor, against the wall, stood some dozen medallions, busts, and figures, in various stages of completion.

To exhibit them Roderick had to place them one by one on the end of a long packing-box, which served as a pedestal.

He did so silently, making no explanations, and looking at them himself with a strange air of quickened curiosity.