Now he was bored, bored to think of the hot stewing months with no relief except such as he could find in vagrom adventures from the harsh rigidity of life among his own people. And he was in a strange condition of physical lassitude. Even his ambition was stagnant. In his work he had only the pleasure of dexterity. It had no meaning, and contained no delight. When he painted apples or a dead bird or a woman, the result was just apples or a dead bird or a woman. The paint made no difference and the subject was still better than his rendering of it. He was only concerned with technical problems. Fascinated by a gradated sky in a picture in the National Gallery, he practised gradated skies until he could have done them in his sleep. And he was tired, tired in body and in soul. Both in his life and in his work he had had to conquer a convention in order to keep his footing in the world of his desire. Just as he had only learned the Detmold style of drawing by a supreme effort of will, so also by a tremendous effort he had learned the rudiments of manners and polite conversation. He had had to overcome his tendency to fall violently in love with every charming person, male or female, he met, and to regard with an aversion equally violent those in whom he found no charm. Such charm must for him be genuine and not a matter of tricks, and for this reason he had regarded every person whom he thought of as old with dislike. For him anybody above twenty-five was "old." He still thought he would be made or marred by the time he was twenty-three, but that age seemed immeasurably far off. Long before then, like a thunderbolt, his full genius would descend upon him and all the world would know his name. He was almost innocent of conceit in this. Such, he believed, was the history of genius, and so far nothing had happened to deny his inward consciousness of his rarity. Relieve the pressure of circumstance and he soared upwards. . . . There was a queer, uncomfortable pleasure in such thoughts and dreams and in imagining a fatality that should drag him down and down to Issy's level and lower. There was a sickening fascination in picturing to himself a descent as swift and irresistible as his upward flight. Yet dreary were the hours of waiting for the impetus that had once or twice so freely and so strongly moved in him. Sick with waiting, he would work in a fury to master trick after trick and difficulty after difficulty in painting, so as to be ready when the time came. All the cunning and wariness of his race welled up in him as he prepared deliberately, slowly, patiently for his opportunity. * * * * *