is?" he cried, looking round the cafe in which they sat. His voice
really trembled a little.

"If you can get out of it, do while there's time."

Philip stared at him with astonishment, but the sight of emotion always
made him feel shy, and he dropped his eyes. He knew that he was looking
upon the tragedy of failure. There was silence. Philip thought that
Cronshaw was looking upon his own life; and perhaps he considered his
youth with its bright hopes and the disappointments which wore out the
radiancy; the wretched monotony of pleasure, and the black future.
Philip's eyes rested on the little pile of saucers, and he knew that
Cronshaw's were on them too.

LI

Two months passed.

It seemed to Philip, brooding over these matters, that in the true
painters, writers, musicians, there was a power which drove them to such
complete absorption in their work as to make it inevitable for them to
subordinate life to art. Succumbing to an influence they never realised,
they were merely dupes of the instinct that possessed them, and life
slipped through their fingers unlived. But he had a feeling that life was
to be lived rather than portrayed, and he wanted to search out the various
experiences of it and wring from each moment all the emotion that it
offered. He made up his mind at length to take a certain step and abide by
the result, and, having made up his mind, he determined to take the step
at once. Luckily enough the next morning was one of Foinet's days, and he
resolved to ask him point-blank whether it was worth his while to go on
with the study of art. He had never forgotten the master's brutal advice
to Fanny Price. It had been sound. Philip could never get Fanny entirely
out of his head. The studio seemed strange without her, and now and then
the gesture of one of the women working there or the tone of a voice would
give him a sudden start, reminding him of her: her presence was more
noticable now she was dead than it had ever been during her life; and he
often dreamed of her at night, waking with a cry of terror. It was
horrible to think of all the suffering she must have endured.

Philip knew that on the days Foinet came to the studio he lunched at a
little restaurant in the Rue d'Odessa, and he hurried his own meal so that
he could go and wait outside till the painter came out. Philip walked up
and down the crowded street and at last saw Monsieur Foinet walking, with
bent head, towards him; Philip was ver