ore taken up educational work as an
amateur, was soon able to establish herself as a professional, and had
taught ever since at a high school in Kensington; picturesquely settling
herself in a tiny flat in an artisan's building, and living as a homely
worker. The dignity and serene simplicity of her life had of late
furnished the one ideal thing for Wyndham's contemplation.

Wyndham himself had stood up straight and felt very strong; had
reassured his fussy, frightened folk that he could rely on his
profession. He felt in himself an endless ardour for achievement, a
confidence of triumph in the contest with men. Nay, more, he would gain
his bread without descending from his high standpoint! The task was
fully as difficult as he had anticipated; but at any rate he contrived
to live for a couple of years. Then, somewhat to his surprise, the
Academy began to return his pictures; and somehow, to his greater
surprise, everything else went against him at the same time. He could
not even get "illustrating" to do. Those who had acclaimed him before
because he was a "swell" were now turning against him apparently for the
same reason. Your aristocrats were never to be taken seriously; they
were necessarily amateurs! It was all so unanimous, so settled and
persistent, that it had almost the air of a conspiracy. Wyndham saw well
enough that everybody had tired of his work, that he had had his hour
and his vogue; his career lay like a squib that had blazed itself out.
All bangs and fizzings, and then a blackened bit of casing, silent,
extinguished! Yet he had the discernment to recognise that the
dying-down had been really inevitable; that his present relative poverty
had little or nothing to do with it. He had been dexterous on the
surface, but the sameness of his note--without even the saving grace of
convention--had destroyed him commercially.

Well, he believed in himself, and he refused to accept this erasure. On
the contrary, he would launch out more daringly than ever. An end to
facile imitation of other people's styles! He must express his own
deeper self. The strict Whistlerian creed was much too narrow. Art was
not merely a bare abstract aesthetics: humanity counted for something
after all. Was woman's loveliness something really apart from woman
herself? True that art meant beauty--in the largest sense, of course;
but why should not humanity and beauty fuse together?

So, scraping together all he could command in the wa