Then afterwards you can take out the taxi.
You're too young yet for the finer work.
Cheerio, my son."
I went out and told the baker that the car was apparently to be had.
The client was asking seven thousand five hundred, but if he saw cash for it, he might come down to seven thousand.
The baker listened so distractedly that I stopped short.
"I have to ring the chap again about six," said I finally.
"About six?" The baker roused out of his inattention. "At six I have to—" He turned to me suddenly. "Would you come with me?"
"Where to?" I asked in amazement.
"To your friend, the painter.
The picture is ready."
"Ach, so, to Ferdinand Grau?"
He nodded.
"Come along, will you?
Then we can discuss the car afterwards."
He seemed to lay some store on not going alone. On the other hand I also lay some store on not letting him alone again.
"All right," said I, therefore. "It's a fair distance— we'd better set off at once."
Ferdinand Grau looked ill.
His face was grey-green, shadowed and puffy.
He greeted us at the door of the studio.
The baker hardly looked at him.
He was strangely unsure of himself and excited.
"Where is it?" he asked immediately.
Ferdinand pointed with a hand to the window.
The picture was leaning there on an easel.
The baker walked across quickly and then stopped motionless in front of the picture.
After a while he removed his hat.
He had been in such a hurry he had quite forgotten it before.
Ferdinand and I remained by the door.
"How goes it, Ferdinand?" I asked.
He made a vague gesture.
"Something wrong?"
"What should be wrong?"
"You look so bad—"
"Nothing else?"
"No," said I, "nothing else."
He put his great hand on my shoulder and smiled with an expression like an old Saint Bernard's.
We waited some time longer. Then we went across to the baker.
I was surprised when I saw the picture. The head had come up very well, from the photo of the wedding and the second care-ridden snap of a woman still young who gazed in front of her with grave, rather bewildered eyes.
"Yes," said the baker without turning round. "That is she." He said it more to himself, and it seemed to me as if he did not even know he had said it.
"Have you enough light?" asked Ferdinand.
The baker did not answer.
Ferdinand went forward to turn the easel a bit.
Then he walked back and nodded to me to come with him into the little room adjoining the studio.
"I would never have thought it," said he, surprised. "It's got.the old rebate-machine on the raw!
He's blubbering—"
"It gets everybody sometime," I replied. "Only for him it's too late."
"Too late," said Ferdinand; "always too late.
It's tie way with life, Bob."
He walked slowly to and fro.