manner,
and when Monet came along and painted differently, people said: But trees
aren't like that. It never struck them that trees are exactly how a
painter chooses to see them. We paint from within outwards--if we force
our vision on the world it calls us great painters; if we don't it ignores
us; but we are the same. We don't attach any meaning to greatness or to
smallness. What happens to our work afterwards is unimportant; we have got
all we could out of it while we were doing it."

There was a pause while Clutton with voracious appetite devoured the food
that was set before him. Philip, smoking a cheap cigar, observed him
closely. The ruggedness of the head, which looked as though it were carved
from a stone refractory to the sculptor's chisel, the rough mane of dark
hair, the great nose, and the massive bones of the jaw, suggested a man of
strength; and yet Philip wondered whether perhaps the mask concealed a
strange weakness. Clutton's refusal to show his work might be sheer
vanity: he could not bear the thought of anyone's criticism, and he would
not expose himself to the chance of a refusal from the Salon; he wanted to
be received as a master and would not risk comparisons with other work
which might force him to diminish his own opinion of himself. During the
eighteen months Philip had known him Clutton had grown more harsh and
bitter; though he would not come out into the open and compete with his
fellows, he was indignant with the facile success of those who did. He had
no patience with Lawson, and the pair were no longer on the intimate terms
upon which they had been when Philip first knew them.

"Lawson's all right," he said contemptuously, "he'll go back to England,
become a fashionable portrait painter, earn ten thousand a year and be an
A. R. A. before he's forty. Portraits done by hand for the nobility and
gentry!"

Philip, too, looked into the future, and he saw Clutton in twenty years,
bitter, lonely, savage, and unknown; still in Paris, for the life there
had got into his bones, ruling a small cenacle with a savage tongue, at
war with himself and the world, producing little in his increasing passion
for a perfection he could not reach; and perhaps sinking at last into
drunkenness. Of late Philip had been captivated by an idea that since one
had only one life it was important to make a success of it, but he did not
count success by the acquiring of money or the achieving of fame; he did
not quite