A great expanse of twelve to fifteen hours lay in front of you.  It was not uncomfortably and unchangeably cut into fixed portions by the incidence of lunch and dinner.  You ate when you felt inclined to eat, and nearly always at restaurants where you met your acquaintances.  Meals were the least important happenings of the day.  You had no reliable watch, and you needed none, for you had no fixed programme.  You worked till you had had enough of work.  You went forth into the world exactly when the idea took you.  If you were bored, you found a friend and went to sit in a cafe.  You were ready for anything.  The word “rule” had been omitted from your dictionary.  You retired to bed when the still small voice within murmured that there was naught else to do.  You woke up in the morning amid cups and saucers, lingerie, masterpieces, and boots.  And the next day was the same.  All the days were the same.  Weeks passed with inexpressible rapidity, and all things beyond the Quarter had the quality of vague murmurings and noises behind the scenes.

May had come.  Audrey and Miss Ingate had lived in the studio for six months before they realised that they had settled down there and that habits had been formed.  Still, they had accomplished something.  Miss Ingate had gone back into oils and was attending life classes, and Audrey, by terrible application and by sitting daily at the feet of an oldish lady in black, and by refusing to speak English between breakfast and dinner, had acquired a good accent and much fluency in the French tongue.  Now, when she spoke French, she thought in French, and she was extremely proud of the achievement.  Also she was acquainted with the names and styles of all known modern painters from pointillistes to cubistes, and, indeed, with the latest eccentricities in all the arts.  She could tell who was immortal, and she was fully aware that there was no real painting in England.  In brief, she was perhaps more Parisian even than she had hoped.  She had absorbed Paris into her system.  It was still not the Paris of her early fancy; in particular, it lacked elegance; but it richly satisfied her.

She had on this afternoon of young May an appointment with a young man.  And the appointment seemed quite natural, causing no inward disturbance.  Less than ever could she understand her father’s ukases against young men and against every form of self-indulgence.  Now, when she had the idea of doing a thing, she merely did it.  Her instincts were her only guide, and, though her instincts were often highly complex, they seldom puzzled her.  The old instinct that the desire to do a thing was a sufficient reason against doing it, had expired.  For many weeks she had lived with a secret fear that such unbridled conduct must lead to terrible catastrophes, but as nothing happened this fear also expired.  She was constantly with young men, and often with men not young; she liked it, but just as much she liked being with women.  She never had any difficulties