It made him shudder when he thought of her uncomeliness, the bedraggled
hair and the dirty hands, the brown dress she always wore, stained and
ragged at the hem: he supposed she was hard up, they were all hard up, but
she might at least be clean; and it was surely possible with a needle and
thread to make her skirt tidy.

Philip began to sort his impressions of the people he was thrown in
contact with. He was not so ingenuous as in those days which now seemed so
long ago at Heidelberg, and, beginning to take a more deliberate interest
in humanity, he was inclined to examine and to criticise. He found it
difficult to know Clutton any better after seeing him every day for three
months than on the first day of their acquaintance. The general impression
at the studio was that he was able; it was supposed that he would do great
things, and he shared the general opinion; but what exactly he was going
to do neither he nor anybody else quite knew. He had worked at several
studios before Amitrano's, at Julian's, the Beaux Arts, and MacPherson's,
and was remaining longer at Amitrano's than anywhere because he found
himself more left alone. He was not fond of showing his work, and unlike
most of the young men who were studying art neither sought nor gave
advice. It was said that in the little studio in the Rue Campagne
Premiere, which served him for work-room and bed-room, he had wonderful
pictures which would make his reputation if only he could be induced to
exhibit them. He could not afford a model but painted still life, and
Lawson constantly talked of a plate of apples which he declared was a
masterpiece. He was fastidious, and, aiming at something he did not quite
fully grasp, was constantly dissatisfied with his work as a whole: perhaps
a part would please him, the forearm or the leg and foot of a figure, a
glass or a cup in a still-life; and he would cut this out and keep it,
destroying the rest of the canvas; so that when people invited themselves
to see his work he could truthfully answer that he had not a single
picture to show. In Brittany he had come across a painter whom nobody else
had heard of, a queer fellow who had been a stockbroker and taken up
painting at middle-age, and he was greatly influenced by his work. He was
turning his back on the impressionists and working out for himself
painfully an individual way not only of painting but of seeing. Philip
felt in him something strangely original.

At Gravier's w