ne to bed,
the enchantment of the attic had instantly resumed much of its power
over him, and he had hurried upstairs fortified with a slice of bread
and half a cold sausage. He had eaten the food absently in gulps while
staring at the cover of "Cazenove's Architectural Views of European
Capitals," abstracted from the shop without payment. Then he had pinned
part of a sheet of cartridge-paper on an old drawing-board which he
possessed, and had sat down. For his purpose the paper ought to have
been soaked and stretched on the board with paste, but that would have
meant a delay of seven or eight hours, and he was not willing to wait.
Though he could not concentrate his mind to begin, his mind could not be
reconciled to waiting. So he had decided to draw his picture in pencil
outline, and then stretch the paper early on Sunday morning; it would
dry during chapel. His new box of paints, a cracked T-square, and some
india-rubber also lay on the table.

He had chosen "View of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame Paris, from the Pont
des Arts." It pleased him by the coloration of the old houses in front
of Notre-Dame, and the reflections in the water of the Seine, and the
elusive blueness of the twin towers amid the pale grey clouds of a
Parisian sky. A romantic scene! He wanted to copy it exactly, to
recreate it from beginning to end, to feel the thrill of producing each
wonderful effect himself. Yet he sat inactive. He sat and vaguely
gazed at the slope of Trafalgar Road with its double row of yellow
jewels, beautifully ascending in fire to the ridge of the horizon and
there losing itself in the deep and solemn purple of the summer night;
and he thought how ugly and commonplace all that was, and how different
from all that were the noble capitals of Europe. Scarcely a sound came
through the open window; song doubtless still gushed forth at the
Dragon, and revellers would not for hours awake the street on their way
to the exacerbating atmosphere of home.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TWO.

He had no resolution to take up the pencil. Yet after the Male Glee
Party had sung "Loud Ocean's Roar," he remembered that he had had a most
clear and distinct impulse to begin drawing architecture at once, and to
do something grand and fine, as grand and fine as the singing, something
that would thrill people as the singing thrilled. If he had not rushed
home instantly it was solely beca