d it
was at a picture-show. I remember pondering upon this accident of place
as I made my way along Bond Street in the afternoon sunshine, for I
could not help thinking of that disdainful dream-woman who posed, in my
imagination, as an authority on art. This, I suppose, was due to my
prolonged study of the Italian Renaissance, a period to which I had kept
my reading for a number of years. I remember giving up my ticket to a
sleek-haired, frock-coated individual, and passing along a corridor hung
with black velvet, against which were hung one or two large canvases in
formidable gold frames, cunningly illuminated by concealed electric
globes. A haughty creature stood by a table loaded with catalogues and
deigned to accept my shilling. And then, feeling strange and _gauche_,
as is only felt by the sea-farer ashore when he steps out of his
authentic _milieu_, I passed through into the gallery, a high, dignified
chamber full of the quiet radiance of beautiful pictures, the life-work
of a man whom I had known. I found myself regretting that fate had not
permitted me to remain in such an environment; but one cannot avoid
one's destiny, and mine is to have an essentially middle-class mind, a
_bourgeois_ mentality, which makes it impossible for me to live among
artists or people of culture for any length of time. I should say that
the reason for this is that such folk are not primarily interested in
persons but in types and ideas, whereas I am for persons. Flowers and
trees, perfumes and music, colours and children, are to me irrelevant.
But every man and woman I meet is to me a fresh problem which engages my
emotions. The talk about types is incomprehensible to me, for each fresh
individual will throw me into a trance of speculation. But only when one
has lived among clever people can one realize how tedious and monotonous
their society can be. I was thinking about the man who had painted these
pictures and how he had delighted to frighten me with his obscene
comments about women, when I saw a woman far down on the left, a woman
in an enormous hat, holding extravagant furs about her thin form, and
talking to a tall, handsome man from between her small white teeth.

For you will not be too much astonished to hear that this girl for whom
I had cherished this sterile fidelity had become in all essentials the
dream-woman who had been the bane of my life for so long. Perhaps she
had always been the same and the illusion of youth had