nd a sink. The rent was nine shillings a week. Philip did
not want so many rooms, but the rent was low and he wished to settle down
at once. He asked the landlady if she could keep the place clean for him
and cook his breakfast, but she replied that she had enough work to do
without that; and he was pleased rather than otherwise because she
intimated that she wished to have nothing more to do with him than to
receive his rent. She told him that, if he inquired at the grocer's round
the corner, which was also a post office, he might hear of a woman who
would 'do' for him.

Philip had a little furniture which he had gathered as he went along, an
arm-chair that he had bought in Paris, and a table, a few drawings, and
the small Persian rug which Cronshaw had given him. His uncle had offered
a fold-up bed for which, now that he no longer let his house in August, he
had no further use; and by spending another ten pounds Philip bought
himself whatever else was essential. He spent ten shillings on putting a
corn-coloured paper in the room he was making his parlour; and he hung on
the walls a sketch which Lawson had given him of the Quai des Grands
Augustins, and the photograph of the Odalisque by Ingres and Manet's
Olympia which in Paris had been the objects of his contemplation while
he shaved. To remind himself that he too had once been engaged in the
practice of art, he put up a charcoal drawing of the young Spaniard Miguel
Ajuria: it was the best thing he had ever done, a nude standing with
clenched hands, his feet gripping the floor with a peculiar force, and on
his face that air of determination which had been so impressive; and
though Philip after the long interval saw very well the defects of his
work its associations made him look upon it with tolerance. He wondered
what had happened to Miguel. There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit
of art by those who have no talent. Perhaps, worn out by exposure,
starvation, disease, he had found an end in some hospital, or in an access
of despair had sought death in the turbid Seine; but perhaps with his
Southern instability he had given up the struggle of his own accord, and
now, a clerk in some office in Madrid, turned his fervent rhetoric to
politics and bull-fighting.

Philip asked Lawson and Hayward to come and see his new rooms, and they
came, one with a bottle of whiskey, the other with a pate de foie gras;
and he was delighted when they praised his taste. He would have