Nash, to the end, it is
true, of making that worthy scoff aloud at what he was pleased to term
his hypocrisy. Gabriel maintained precisely that there were more ideas,
more of those that man lived by, in a single room of the National
Gallery than in all the statutes of Parliament. Nick had replied to this
more than once that the determination of what man did live by was
required; to which Nash had retorted (and it was very rarely that he
quoted Scripture) that it was at any rate not by bread and beans alone.
The statutes of Parliament gave him bread and beans _tout au plus_.

Nick had at present no pretension of trying this question over again: he
reminded himself that his ambiguity was subjective, as the philosophers
said; the result of a mood which in due course would be at the mercy of
another mood. It made him curse, and cursing, as a finality, lacked
firmness--one had to drive in posts somewhere under. The greatest time
to do one's work was when it didn't seem worth doing, for then one gave
it a brilliant chance, that of resisting the stiffest test of all--the
test of striking one as too bad. To do the most when there would be the
least to be got by it was to be most in the spirit of high production.
One thing at any rate was certain, Nick reflected: nothing on earth
would induce him to change back again--not even if this twilight of the
soul should last for the rest of his days. He hardened himself in his
posture with a good conscience which, had they had a glimpse of it,
would have made him still more diverting to those who already thought
him so; and now, by a happy chance, Miriam suddenly supplied the bridge
correcting the gap in his continuity. If he had made his sketch it was a
proof he had done her, and that he had done her flashed upon him as a
sign that she would be still more feasible. Art was _doing_--it came
back to that--which politics in most cases weren't. He thus, to pursue
our image, planted his supports in the dimness beneath all cursing, and
on the platform so improvised was able, in his relief, to dance. He sent
out a telegram to Balaklava Place requesting his beautiful sitter by no
manner of means to fail him. When his servant came back it was to usher
into the studio Peter Sherringham, whom the man had apparently found at
the door.

The hour was so early for general commerce that Nick immediately guessed
his visitor had come on some rare errand; but this inference yielded to
the reflexion tha