. Michael Fane was not in London, either, so Guy went
round to Maurice Avery's studio in Grosvenor Road, and in the pleasure
of the company he found there the Persian idea grew less insistent.
Maurice himself had just been invited to write a series of articles on
the English ballet for a critical weekly journal called _The Point of
View_. They went to a theater together, and Guy as he listened to
Maurice's jargon felt for a while quite rustic, and was once or twice
definitely taken in by it. Had he really been stagnating all this time
at Wychford? And then the old superiority which at Oxford he always felt
over his friend reasserted itself.

"You're still skating, Maurice," he drawled. "The superficial area of
your brain must be unparalleled."

"You frowsty old yokel!" his friend exclaimed, laughing.

"I don't believe I shall get much out of breath, catching up with your
advanced ideas," Guy retorted. "Anyway, this Autumn I shall come to town
for good."

"And about time you did," said Maurice. "I say, mind you send your poems
to _The Point of View_, and I'll give you a smashing fine notice the
week after publication."

Guy asked when Michael was coming back.

"He's made a glorious mess of things, hasn't he?" said Maurice.

"Oh, I don't know. Not necessarily."

"Well, I admit he found her out in time. But fancy wanting to marry a
girl like that. I told him what she was, and he merely got furious with
me. But he's an extraordinary chap altogether. By the way, when are
_you_ going to get married?"

"When I can afford it," said Guy.

"The question is whether an artist can ever afford to get married."

"What rot you talk."

"Wiser men than I have come to that conclusion," said Maurice. "Of
course I haven't met your lady-love; but it does seem to me that your
present mode of life is bound to be sterile of impressions."

"I don't go about self-consciously obtaining impressions," said Guy, a
little angrily. "I would as soon search for local color. Personally I
very much doubt if any impressions after eighteen or nineteen help the
artist. As it seems to me, all experience after that age is merely
valuable for maturing and putting into proportion the more vital
experiences of childhood. And I'm not at all sure that there isn't in
every artist a capacity for development which proceeds quite
independently of externals. I speculate sometimes as to what would be
the result upon a really creative temperament of being w