and when at last he
went to bed he was wide awake; he listened to the manifold noise of Paris.

Next day about tea-time he made his way to the Lion de Belfort, and in a
new street that led out of the Boulevard Raspail found Mrs. Otter. She was
an insignificant woman of thirty, with a provincial air and a deliberately
lady-like manner; she introduced him to her mother. He discovered
presently that she had been studying in Paris for three years and later
that she was separated from her husband. She had in her small drawing-room
one or two portraits which she had painted, and to Philip's inexperience
they seemed extremely accomplished.

"I wonder if I shall ever be able to paint as well as that," he said to
her.

"Oh, I expect so," she replied, not without self-satisfaction. "You can't
expect to do everything all at once, of course."

She was very kind. She gave him the address of a shop where he could get
a portfolio, drawing-paper, and charcoal.

"I shall be going to Amitrano's about nine tomorrow, and if you'll be
there then I'll see that you get a good place and all that sort of thing."

She asked him what he wanted to do, and Philip felt that he should not let
her see how vague he was about the whole matter.

"Well, first I want to learn to draw," he said.

"I'm so glad to hear you say that. People always want to do things in such
a hurry. I never touched oils till I'd been here for two years, and look
at the result."

She gave a glance at the portrait of her mother, a sticky piece of
painting that hung over the piano.

"And if I were you, I would be very careful about the people you get to
know. I wouldn't mix myself up with any foreigners. I'm very careful
myself."

Philip thanked her for the suggestion, but it seemed to him odd. He did
not know that he particularly wanted to be careful.

"We live just as we would if we were in England," said Mrs. Otter's
mother, who till then had spoken little. "When we came here we brought all
our own furniture over."

Philip looked round the room. It was filled with a massive suite, and at
the window were the same sort of white lace curtains which Aunt Louisa put
up at the vicarage in summer. The piano was draped in Liberty silk and so
was the chimney-piece. Mrs. Otter followed his wandering eye.

"In the evening when we close the shutters one might really feel one was
in England."

"And we have our meals just as if we were at home," added her mother. "A
meat b