As to the studio, he hesitated. A new situation was created by this new feeling of indifference. Its duration could not be gauged.—He wished to stay in Paris just then to finish some paintings begun some months before. He substituted for the Impressionist’s necessity to remain in front of the object being represented, a sensation of the desirability of finishing a canvas in the place where it was begun. He had an Impressionist’s horror of change. So Tarr had evolved a plan. At first sight it was wicked. It was no blacker than most of his ingenuities. Bertha, as he had suggested to Butcher, he had in some lymphatic way, _dans la peau_. It appeared a matter of physical discomfort to leave her altogether. It must be done gradually. So he had thought that, instead of going away to England, where the separation might cause him restlessness, he had perhaps better settle down in her neighbourhood. Through a series of specially tended ennuis, he would soon find himself in a position to depart. So the extreme nearness of the studio to Bertha’s flat was only another inducement for him to take it. “If it were next door, so much the better!” he thought. _Now for this famous feeling of indifference._ Was there anything in it?—The studio for the moment should be put aside. He would go to see Bertha. Let this visit solve this question. CHAPTER IV The new summer heat drew heavy pleasant ghosts out of the ground, like plants disappeared in winter; spectres of energy, bulking the hot air with vigorous dreams. Or they had entered into the trees, in imitation of Pagan gods, and nodded their delicate distant intoxication to him. Visions were released in the sap, with scented explosion, the spring one bustling and tremendous reminiscence. Tarr felt the street was a pleasant current, setting from some immense and tropic gulf, neighboured by Floridas of remote invasions. He ambled down it puissantly, shoulders shaped like these waves; a heavy-sided drunken fish. The houses, with winks of the shocked clockwork, were grazed, holding along their surface thick soft warmth. It poured weakly into his veins. A big dog wandering on its easily transposable business, inviting some delightful accident to deflect it from maudlin and massive promenade. In his mind, too, as in the dog’s, his business was doubtful—a small black spot ahead in his brain, half puzzling but peremptory. The mat heavy light grey of putty-coloured houses, like thickening merely of hot summer atmosphere without sun, gave a spirituality to this deluge of animal well-being, in weighty pale sense-solidarity. Through the opaquer atmosphere sounds came lazily or tinglingly. People had become a Balzacian species, boldly tragic and comic: like a cast of “Comédie Humaine” humanity off for the day, Balzac sleeping immensely in the cemetery.