Mitchell and he! That friendship was the source of his new confidence. Golda had been and still was much to him, but when it came to painting she knew nothing at all, and painting was the important thing. Through painting lay not only satisfied ambitions and fame and riches, but life itself, and of that what could Golda know? It was a great thing, therefore, to be established away from home when Mitchell returned from the country. And Mitchell approved. He had suffered from being under his father's shadow, and with Weldon and Kessler he had taken a studio near Fitzroy Square. He said:-- "A time will come when you will have to leave the East End." "I shall never leave them," replied Mendel. "What I want to paint is there. They are my people, and all that I have belongs to them." "Rubbish. You'll soon be getting commissions, and you can't ask people who can afford to pay for portraits to a hole like that." "They will come to my studio," said Mendel, "or I will not take their commissions." Though Mitchell was rather shocked by his frank conceit, he could not but admire and envy the way his impulses came rushing to the surface and were never deterred by considerations as to the impression he might be making. Mendel trusted Mitchell absolutely and hid nothing from him, neither the most scabrous of his deeds nor the most childish of his desires. He made no secret of the new manly feeling that had come to him through Hetty, the conviction that he could meet the West End on its own terms. When he showed Mitchell the work he had done during the holidays, his friend said:-- "Gawd! The difference is absolutely startling. There's charm in every one of them, and they're not fakes either." With Hetty he was enraptured. "Gawd!" he said; "I'll give ten years to painting her, as Leonardo did to Monna Lisa, and then it would not be finished. Came from a Margate lodging-house, did she? Mark my words: she'll marry a successful artist and queen it among the best." With Mitchell, Hetty put forth all her cajolery when she found that he knew what she thought good people. She could look very pathetic and delicate, and middle-aged artists were sorry for her, and thought being a model a perilous profession for her. One of them warned her of the dangers she must run, and especially mentioned Mitchell and Kühler as young men to be avoided. They roared with laughter when she told them. The Paris Café was Paradise to her, and she made friends with all its habitués and attracted the attention of Calthrop, who became Mendel's enemy for life when she told him that the youngster had said of him that he had been a good artist once, but was now only repeating himself.