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Updated: May 24, 2025
I closed the door in the hoarding behind her. Then I walked straight across the yard to Benlian's. He was lying on a couch, not doing anything. "I know I ought to have come sooner, Benlian," I said, "but I had somebody with me." "Yes," he said, looking hard at me; and I got a bit red. "She's awfully nice," I stammered; "but you never bother with girls, and you don't drink or smoke "
The real studio, the big one, was at the other end of the yard, and that was Benlian's. Scarcely anybody ever came there. The entrance was from the street, through a door in a billposter's hoarding; and on the river not far away the steamboats hooted, and, in windy weather, the floorboards hummed to keep them company.
He advanced to the couch, and put his hand under one of the frames of ground glass. One of the doctors did something in a corner. A harsh crackling filled the room, and an unearthly, fluorescent light shot and flooded across the frame where Benlian's hand was. The two doctors looked, and then started back. One of them gave a cry. He was sickly white. "Put me on the couch," said Benlian.
It was a thick, misty night, and the light came streaming up through Benlian's roof window, with the shadows of the window-divisions losing themselves like dark rays in the fog. A lot of hooting was going on down the river, steamers and barges.... Oh, I know what I'd come into my studio for! It was for those negatives.
I locked my own studio up, and lay as quiet as a mouse in Benlian's place when they came hammering at the door.... And now I must come to what you'll called the finish though it's awfully stupid to call things like that "finishes." I'd slipped into my own studio one night I forget what for; and I'd gone quietly, for I knew they were following me, those people, and would catch me if they could.
Benlian's breath came in little flutters, many seconds apart. He had a little clock on the table. Twenty minutes passed, and half an hour. I was a little disappointed, really, that the statue wasn't going to move; but Benlian knew best, and it was filling quietly up with him instead.
But the next day it was all right again. I was Benlian's again. And I wondered, when I remembered his struggle, whether a dying man had ever fought for life as hard as Benlian was fighting to get away from it and pass himself. The next time after that that he fetched me called me whatever you like to name it I burst into his studio like a bullet.
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