Nevertheless, the creative instinct was too powerful in him to let his depression at the interference of this eternal waverer affect him long, or sap his strength. In the very midst of his upbraiding, after he had angrily thrown the first sheet into a corner, he took a second frame of card-board, and began to sketch the scene where the homeless beauty, with her naked boy, is standing at the gate of the convent, surrounded by the staring nuns, whose looks and attitudes express doubt and suspicion. Felix threw himself on his couch again, and lay smoking, rarely throwing in a word, as he watched every movement of the other's hand. The proximity of this man, who was self-reliant, so humble, and yet so constantly striving at some lofty aim, exercised a singularly soothing influence upon Felix's restless soul. He confessed this, when Kohle began to express surprise that any one should leave the town, head over heels in this way, and rush into the country, in order, when he arrived there, to shut himself up in a sunless garret room, and look on while a man painfully trundled his barrow over a hard road, toward a goal of art which is generally supposed to have long since been left behind. "My dear Kohle," he said, "only let me stay here. I should like very much to learn something from you which would be of more benefit to me than a walk or a bath in the lake--namely, your art of knowing just what you want, and of wanting nothing which you cannot have. Was this art born in you, or have you gradually acquired it, and paid your instruction-fee for it, as for other arts?'