Through the winter the habit of labor and his pride in it brought him slowly nearer to understanding of Ann Pidduck and her absorption in fun. He began to share her pleasure in relaxation. She taught him to dance, and they attended shilling balls together and she communicated to him her Cockney pleasure in the streets, the prowling in the lighted thoroughfares, the making of chance acquaintances, the full gusto of broad jests. He introduced her to Kilner and tried to make her include him in their intimacy and their jaunts; but she seemed to be scared of the artist, and when René appeared with him would make excuses of other engagements. Then there were evenings of talk with Kilner, René hardly listening to him but rejoicing in the vigor of his words. He was painting in his spare time and on Saturdays and Sundays, and through his pictures and the painter's enthusiasm for things seen René learned to use his eyes. That was a slow process, too. Often he saw beautiful things and creatures that so moved him that he lost sight of them, and dwelt only in the emotion they had roused, falsifying his vision. He would constantly be overcome in that way when he tried to describe anything he had seen to his friend, who would then turn upon him and call him a bloody liar, and a sentimentalist, and a filthy spitter upon the world's beauty, a crapulous cheat, trying to steal a winged joy and turn it into a selfish pleasure; and much more that was beyond René except that he would feel ashamed but also invigorated by being so fiercely flung back into humility. Kilner took him to the National Gallery and very carefully explained the difference between a real picture and a fraud. There were, according to him, very few real pictures. He talked René into a very pretty bewilderment from which his hours with Ann were a welcome relief. There everything was what it seemed, everybody was taken (more or less) at his or her own valuation; there was fun to be extracted from everything and everybody, if only you approached them good-humoredly enough. And if you failed and did not find the expected fun--Oh, well, try elsewhere. There are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.