know what I do want, and it's a very humiliating state of
affairs for me."

When Guy left the studio that evening he came away with that pleasant
warming of the cockles of the brain that empirical conversation always
gave. It was really very pleasant to be chattering away about aesthetic
theories, to be meeting new people, and to be infused with this sense of
being joined up to the motive force of a city's life. At his lodgings in
Vincent Square a letter from Pauline awaited his return, and with a
shock he realized half-way through its perusal that he was reading it
listlessly. He turned back and tried to bring to its contents that old
feverish absorption in magic pages, but something was wanting, whether
in the letter or whether in himself he did not know. He came to the
point of asking himself if he loved her still as much, and almost with
horror at the question vowed he loved her more than ever, and that of
all things on earth he only longed for their marriage. Yet in bed that
night he thought more of his argument in the studio than about Pauline,
and when he did think about her it was with a drowsy sense of relief.
Vincent Square under the bland city moon seemed very peaceful, and in
retrospect Wychford a place of endless storms.

Next morning when Guy sat down to answer Pauline's letter, he found
himself writing with mechanical fluency without really thinking of her
at all. In fact, for the moment, she represented something that
disturbed the Summer calm in London, and he consciously did not want to
think about her until all this late troublous time had lost its
actuality and he could be sure of returning to the Pauline of their
love's earlier days.

These shuttlecock letters were tossed backward and forward between
Wychford and London throughout the rest of June and most of July, and
sometimes Guy thought they were as unreal as his own poetry. He spent
his time in looking up old friends, in second-hand bookshops, in the
galleries of theaters. He did not see Michael Fane, who wrote to him
from Rome before Guy knew he had gone there. Comeragh, however, he saw
pretty often, and he enjoyed talking about politics nearly as much as
about art. He met Sir George Gascony, and Comeragh assured him
afterwards that when Sir George went out to Persia in August or
September he could, if he liked, go with him. Guy put the notion at the
back of his mind, whence he occasionally took it out and played with it.
In the end, howev