e,
smoking, and discussing art. There ran into the river, a little way off,
a narrow canal bordered by poplars, and along the banks of this after
their day's work they often wandered. They spent all day painting. Like
most of their generation they were obsessed by the fear of the
picturesque, and they turned their backs on the obvious beauty of the town
to seek subjects which were devoid of a prettiness they despised. Sisley
and Monet had painted the canal with its poplars, and they felt a desire
to try their hands at what was so typical of France; but they were
frightened of its formal beauty, and set themselves deliberately to avoid
it. Miss Chalice, who had a clever dexterity which impressed Lawson
notwithstanding his contempt for feminine art, started a picture in which
she tried to circumvent the commonplace by leaving out the tops of the
trees; and Lawson had the brilliant idea of putting in his foreground a
large blue advertisement of chocolat Menier in order to emphasise his
abhorrence of the chocolate box.

Philip began now to paint in oils. He experienced a thrill of delight when
first he used that grateful medium. He went out with Lawson in the morning
with his little box and sat by him painting a panel; it gave him so much
satisfaction that he did not realise he was doing no more than copy; he
was so much under his friend's influence that he saw only with his eyes.
Lawson painted very low in tone, and they both saw the emerald of the
grass like dark velvet, while the brilliance of the sky turned in their
hands to a brooding ultramarine. Through July they had one fine day after
another; it was very hot; and the heat, searing Philip's heart, filled him
with languor; he could not work; his mind was eager with a thousand
thoughts. Often he spent the mornings by the side of the canal in the
shade of the poplars, reading a few lines and then dreaming for half an
hour. Sometimes he hired a rickety bicycle and rode along the dusty road
that led to the forest, and then lay down in a clearing. His head was full
of romantic fancies. The ladies of Watteau, gay and insouciant, seemed to
wander with their cavaliers among the great trees, whispering to one
another careless, charming things, and yet somehow oppressed by a nameless
fear.

They were alone in the hotel but for a fat Frenchwoman of middle age, a
Rabelaisian figure with a broad, obscene laugh. She spent the day by the
river patiently fishing for fish she never