He had made a great, a critical resolve.

He passed furtively down Werter Road into the High Street, and then stood a moment outside Stawley's stationery shop, which is also a library, an emporium of leather-bags, and an artists'-colourman's.

He entered Stawley's blushing, trembling--he a man of fifty who could not see his own toes--and asked for certain tubes of colour.

An energetic young lady who seemed to know all about the graphic arts endeavoured to sell to him a magnificent and complicated box of paints, which opened out into an easel and a stool, and contained a palette of a shape preferred by the late Edwin Long, R.A., a selection of colours which had been approved by the late Lord Leighton, P.R.A., and a patent drying-oil which (she said) had been used by Whistler.

Priam Farll got away from the shop without this apparatus for the confection of masterpieces, but he did not get away without a sketching-box which he had had no intention of buying.
The young lady was too energetic for him.