case. In both places I had friends who treated my
erratic appearances with discretion, in one case tinged with respect, in
the other with a certain amused tolerance. I owed this tolerance to the
most careless, the most confirmed of those Bohemians (his beard had
streaks of grey amongst its many other tints) who, once bringing his
heavy hand down on my shoulder, took my defence against the charge of
being disloyal and even foreign to that milieu of earnest visions taking
beautiful and revolutionary shapes in the smoke of pipes, in the jingle
of glasses.

"That fellow (_ce garcon_) is a primitive nature, but he may be an artist
in a sense. He has broken away from his conventions. He is trying to
put a special vibration and his own notion of colour into his life; and
perhaps even to give it a modelling according to his own ideas. And for
all you know he may be on the track of a masterpiece; but observe: if it
happens to be one nobody will see it. It can be only for himself. And
even he won't be able to see it in its completeness except on his
death-bed. There is something fine in that."

I had blushed with pleasure; such fine ideas had never entered my head.
But there was something fine. . . . How far all this seemed! How mute
and how still! What a phantom he was, that man with a beard of at least
seven tones of brown. And those shades of the other kind such as
Baptiste with the shaven diplomatic face, the _maitre d'hotel_ in charge
of the _petit salon_, taking my hat and stick from me with a deferential
remark: "Monsieur is not very often seen nowadays." And those other
well-groomed heads raised and nodding at my passage--"_Bonjour_."
"_Bonjour_"--following me with interested eyes; these young X.s and Z.s,
low-toned, markedly discreet, lounging up to my table on their way out
with murmurs: "Are you well?"--"Will one see you anywhere this
evening?"--not from curiosity, God forbid, but just from friendliness;
and passing on almost without waiting for an answer. What had I to do
with them, this elegant dust, these moulds of provincial fashion?

I also often lunched with Dona Rita without invitation. But that was now
unthinkable. What had I to do with a woman who allowed somebody else to
make her cry and then with an amazing lack of good feeling did her
offensive weeping on my shoulder? Obviously I could have nothing to do
with her. My five minutes' meditation in the middle of the bedroom came
to an end wit