Meanwhile Clytie's “own” picture of the model Jack was developing into a more finished and more ambitious work than she had originally intended. On Kent's suggestion she had toned down some of its brutality without rendering less vivid the presentation of the problem. She thought of trying to exhibit the picture when it was completed; Jack therefore continued to appear in the studio at irregular intervals. Winifred encouraged him now, trying to humanise him with picture-books, stories, and simple talk, but Clytie shook her head at her gentle friend's efforts, conceiving them, with her fuller and more materialistic knowledge, to be entirely futile. Still Winifred obtained from him more details of what Clytie called his private life than she herself could do. With both of them he was fierce and sullen, but with Winifred he was more cynically expansive. These details only supplemented the data afforded by his own personality. Sometimes he went to the board school, where he was in the third standard; oftener he stayed away. He slept in his mother's room, ate his desultory food there with the fierceness of a young wolf; but his real home was in the street. Once he had been given a situation as satellite to a thriving costermonger, but the restraints of regular employment had chafed him into resignation of his post. Besides, his employer had thrashed him unmercifully. As for his parentage, he was entirely ignorant; he did not care. To his mind it was a merciful dispensation of Providence that he only had one parent to irritate and annoy him. He liked to come to the studio because it was warm and comfortable, besides which he obtained a shilling at the end of the day to be expended on inferior tobacco when together with his playmates. One morning, earlier than usual, he slouched up the stairs and, contrary to custom, found the studio door open and the apartment empty. He entered, swinging the door with him, which, being caught by the draught from an open skylight, slammed with sudden violence. If he had heard the quick rattle of a falling door-knob, his subsequent conduct would doubtless have been modified. He was alone in the studio; he waited idly, lying in front of the stove; but as no one came, he began to feel restless. He rose to his feet, wandered about, shut the skylight, examined the contents of the studio. He found a packet of cigarettes lying about, which he pocketed; an investigation of the cupboard in the wall rewarded him with some lumps of sugar and some sweet biscuits. Still no one came, which was not extraordinary, as his employer had not yet thought of breakfasting. No further resources being offered to his predatory instincts, he proceeded to look at the pictures, with which he had already a contemptuous familiarity. The only one for which he had a genuine admiration, or rather the barbarian's feeling of awe at any counterfeit presentment of himself, was his own portrait. At this he seldom tired of looking.