a friend of mine.

"But where's the harm," I argued, "so long as I always tear it up? This
is real stuff. I'll get somewhere this way if I keep on."

And I did keep on. Shamelessly I wormed my way into friends by the
dozen. I found it such an absorbing pursuit I could hardly wait to
finish up one before I went on to another. There were such a bewildering
lot of them, now that I had pried open my eyes. Would-be painters,
sculptors, poets, dramatists, novelists, rich and poor, tragic ones and
comic ones, with the meanest pettiest jealousies, the most bumptious
self-conceits, the blindest worship of masters, the most profound
humility, ambition so savage it made men inhuman. Many were starving
themselves to death.

There was a little Hungarian Jew, an ardent follower of Matisse.

"Technique?" he cried. "It is nothing! To grip your soul in your two
hands and press it on your canvas--that is art, that is Matisse!"

He took me night after night through old buildings up in Montparnasse,
immense and dismal rookeries crowded with Poles, Bohemians and God knows
what other races, all feverish post-impressionists. Often we would find
three together close around one candle, scowling and squinting at their
easels, gaunt, silent, eager. Matisse--Matisse!

"Most of them," said my guide, "are just mad. They cannot paint. All
think they are going to do great things, but all they are going to do is
to die."

It was through this little Hungarian that I made my first study of
female life.

Why delay any longer? I had been in Paris over six months, and I had
qualms almost of guilt at the thought of this chastity of mine. At first
I said, "Art is a jealous mistress." And this did splendidly for a time.
But then a stout German youth came along and laid it down as an absolute
law that no writer could do a woman right until he had lived with a
dozen. Hence that scented little cat with whom he had lived for the past
year. She was the first of the dozen, eh? Damn the fellow, how much was
there in it? De Maupassant certainly hadn't held off. In fact there were
few of my idols who had. Why not be brave and take the plunge? It need
not be such a terrific plunge; no doubt if I went at it right I could
find a safe, easy kind of a _her_, friendly and confiding, a thoroughly
good fellow with none of these wild ups and downs. The less temperament
the better; she must have a good quiet head on her shoulders; no doubt
we would need it. And she mus