Mendel plunged more ardently than ever into his career with Mitchell and the others, but found that they were not prepared to share or to admit the new freedom which he had begun to enjoy. The Birnbaum patronage had always to a certain extent restrained him, but now that it was shaken off he plunged madly and wildly into every kind of extravagance. He was no longer content to be the equal of the others. He wanted to lead them. He was the most successful of them all, and he wanted them all to join him in forcing art upon London. Calthrop had shown them the way, but he had unaccountably stopped short. He had many imitators, and there were even women who looked like his type, but it all ended in his personality. . . . Art was something else: something outside that, an impersonal thing, which London should be made to recognize. The pictures of Kühler, Mitchell, Weldon, and Kessler should be, as it were, only forerunners of the mighty pictures that should be painted. . . . He was just as extreme and violent in his vices as he was in his idealism, and even Mitchell was rather upset by his pranks and caprices. It was one thing to take a shy tame genius among your acquaintance, quite another when the genius ran wild and dragged you hither and thither and with breathless haste from the vilest human company to the most dizzily soaring ideas. Weldon, who was uncommonly shrewd, had begun to see the danger of allowing Hetty Finch to arrange their affairs, and when on top of that Mendel, drunk with freedom and success, began to take charge, he thought it time to secure himself and began to withdraw from their undertakings and adventures. At last Kessler struck, and told Mendel that he might be the greatest genius that was ever born, but should sometimes try to remember that his friends were gentlemen and could not always be making allowances for his birth and upbringing. This happened in the Paris Café. Mendel fell like a shot bird, like a stone. The eager words froze on his lips, his face visibly contracted and became haggard, his eyes blinked for a moment, then stared glassily. He sat so for some minutes, then rose from the table and walked quickly out of the café. He did not appear for a week, nor was anything heard of him. He sat at home working furiously. Hetty Finch went to see him, but he turned her out, telling her that she was a hateful, cold-hearted woman and that he would never see her again. At last he wrote to Mitchell, a letter of agony, for Mitchell, his friend, seemed to him the worst offender, by not having warned him of what was in the air:--