“Yes, I know that. But I’m convinced that if I had a small income and could do what I wanted, I should be far happier than if I made a great deal of money doing what I hated.” “Well, my boy, I’m really rather glad that you don’t take the purely money point of view. But think it over. If you take your examinations and qualify, there is a regularly established practice in which you can take your place as my partner and, in due course as my successor. Think it over for a few months. And if you finally decide to take the course you mention, I daresay I can allow you two or three hundred a year, which will be four hundred when I die.” Now all this was very fatherly and kindly and sensible. In an outburst of quite genuine affection and gratitude George protested first of all that he could not bear to think of his father’s dying and that it was odious to think of profiting by his death. “But,” he added, “I am quite determined to be a painter in spite of everything. If you can help me as you say, it will all be perfect.” Nothing more was said on the subject, but in the following weeks George drew and painted hard, went twice to London to look at the galleries and get materials, and thought he was making progress. But what strange weakness permitted George Augustus to yield to the cruelty of raising these hopes which he must have known would be speedily wrecked? The thought of this was constantly in George’s mind, as he moved about silently, rather scared, in the morning hours following the receipt of the letter. It was a problem he never solved, but the incident did not increase his trust in the world or himself.