know yet what he meant by it, perhaps variety of experience and
the making the most of his abilities. It was plain anyway that the life
which Clutton seemed destined to was failure. Its only justification would
be the painting of imperishable masterpieces. He recollected Cronshaw's
whimsical metaphor of the Persian carpet; he had thought of it often; but
Cronshaw with his faun-like humour had refused to make his meaning clear:
he repeated that it had none unless one discovered it for oneself. It was
this desire to make a success of life which was at the bottom of Philip's
uncertainty about continuing his artistic career. But Clutton began to
talk again.

"D'you remember my telling you about that chap I met in Brittany? I saw
him the other day here. He's just off to Tahiti. He was broke to the
world. He was a brasseur d'affaires, a stockbroker I suppose you call it
in English; and he had a wife and family, and he was earning a large
income. He chucked it all to become a painter. He just went off and
settled down in Brittany and began to paint. He hadn't got any money and
did the next best thing to starving."

"And what about his wife and family?" asked Philip.

"Oh, he dropped them. He left them to starve on their own account."

"It sounds a pretty low-down thing to do."

"Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman you must give up being
an artist. They've got nothing to do with one another. You hear of men
painting pot-boilers to keep an aged mother--well, it shows they're
excellent sons, but it's no excuse for bad work. They're only tradesmen.
An artist would let his mother go to the workhouse. There's a writer I
know over here who told me that his wife died in childbirth. He was in
love with her and he was mad with grief, but as he sat at the bedside
watching her die he found himself making mental notes of how she looked
and what she said and the things he was feeling. Gentlemanly, wasn't it?"

"But is your friend a good painter?" asked Philip.

"No, not yet, he paints just like Pissarro. He hasn't found himself, but
he's got a sense of colour and a sense of decoration. But that isn't the
question. It's the feeling, and that he's got. He's behaved like a perfect
cad to his wife and children, he's always behaving like a perfect cad; the
way he treats the people who've helped him--and sometimes he's been saved
from starvation merely by the kindness of his friends--is simply beastly.
He just happens to be a