Summary
The narrator opens with a string of cynical maxims: romance is the privilege of the rich, and it is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. These are truths Hughie Erskine never learns. Good-looking and good-natured but no great intellect, he has tried the Stock Exchange, the tea trade and selling dry sherry, and failed at each, so he lives on two hundred a year from an aunt. He loves Laura Merton, whose father, a retired Colonel who is fond of Hughie, will allow no engagement until he has ten thousand pounds.
On his way to the Mertons in Holland Park, Hughie calls at the studio of his friend Alan Trevor, a rough, red-bearded man who is also a real master of his art. Trevor is finishing a life-size painting of a beggar, and the model, a wizened old man in a tattered cloak, stands on a platform holding out his hat. Trevor says a model earns a shilling an hour, while the picture will fetch two thousand guineas. When Trevor is called away, Hughie pities the old man and gives him his only sovereign, knowing it means no hansoms for a fortnight. The beggar smiles and thanks him.
That night at the Palette Club, Trevor tells Hughie that the old model was curious about him and heard all about his income, Laura and the Colonel's £10,000. When Hughie protests at his private affairs being told to a beggar, Trevor reveals that the man is Baron Hausberg, one of the richest men in Europe, who buys all his pictures and commissioned a portrait of himself as a beggar. Hughie is horrified to have given a millionaire a sovereign, and Trevor, in fits of laughter, predicts that the Baron will invest it for him and dine out on the story.
The next morning an old gentleman in gold spectacles, Monsieur Gustave Naudin, calls on Hughie from the Baron. Expecting a demand for an apology, Hughie stammers out his regrets, but Naudin smiles and hands him a sealed envelope inscribed 'A wedding present to Hugh Erskine and Laura Merton, from an old beggar'. Inside is a cheque for £10,000. At the wedding Trevor is best man and the Baron makes a speech, and Trevor remarks that millionaire models are rare enough, but model millionaires are rarer still.