as no feminine influence about Vandover at this critical time to
help him see the world in the right light and to gauge things correctly,
and he might have been totally corrupted while in his earliest teens had
it not been for another side of his character that began to develop
about the same time.

This was his artistic side. He seemed to be a born artist. At first he
only showed bent for all general art. He drew well, he made curious
little modellings in clayey mud; he had a capital ear for music and
managed in some unknown way of his own to pick out certain tunes on the
piano. At one time he gave evidence of a genuine talent for the stage.
For days he would pretend to be some dreadful sort of character, he did
not know whom, talking to himself, stamping and shaking his fists; then
he would dress himself in an old smoking-cap, a red table-cloth and one
of his father's discarded Templar swords, and pose before the long
mirrors ranting and scowling. At another time he would devote his
attention to literature, making up endless stories with which he
terrified himself, telling them to himself in a low voice for hours
after he had got into bed. Sometimes he would write out these stories
and read them to his father after supper, standing up between the
folding doors of the library, acting out the whole narrative with
furious gestures. Once he even wrote a little poem which seriously
disturbed the Old Gentleman, filling him with formless ideas and vague
hopes for the future.

In a suitable environment Vandover might easily have become an author,
actor or musician, since it was evident that he possessed the
fundamental _afflatus_ that underlies all branches of art. As it was,
the merest chance decided his career.

In the same library where he had found the famous encyclopaedia article
was "A Home Book of Art," one of those showily bound gift books one sees
lying about conspicuously on parlour centre tables. It was an English
publication calculated to meet popular and general demand. There were a
great many full-page pictures of lonely women, called "Reveries" or
"Idylls," ideal "Heads" of gipsy girls, of coquettes, and heads of
little girls crowned with cherries and illustrative of such titles as
"Spring," "Youth," "Innocence." Besides these were sentimental pictures,
as, for instance, one entitled "It Might Have Been," a sad-eyed girl,
with long hair, musing over a miniature portrait, and another especially
impressive whi