And at last there came a moment when Lancelot felt he could bear it no longer.  And then he suddenly saw daylight.  Why should he teach only Rosie?  Nay, why should he teach Rosie at all?  If he was reduced to giving lessons—­and after all it was no degradation to do so, no abandonment of his artistic ideal, rather a solution of the difficulty so simple that he wondered it had not occurred to him before—­why should he give them at so wretched a price?  He would get another pupil, other pupils, who would enable him to dispense with the few shillings he made by Rosie.  He would not ask anybody to recommend him pupils—­there was no need for his acquaintances to know, and if he asked Peter, Peter would probably play him some philanthropic trick.  No, he would advertise.

After he had spent his last gold breast-pin in advertisements, he realised that to get pianoforte pupils in London was as easy as to get songs published.  By the time he quite realised it, it was May, and then he sat down to realise his future.

The future was sublimely simple—­as simple as his wardrobe had grown.  All his clothes were on his back.  In a week or two he would be on the streets; for a poor widow could not be expected to lodge, partially board (with use of the piano, gas), an absolutely penniless young gentleman, though he combined the blood of twenty county families with the genius of a pleiad of tone poets.

There was only one bright spot in the prospect.  Rosie’s lessons would come to an end.

What he would do when he got on the streets was not so clear as the rest of this prophetic vision.  He might take to a barrel-organ—­but that would be a cruel waste of his artistic touch.  Perhaps he would die on a doorstep, like the professor of many languages, whose starvation was recorded in that very morning’s paper.

Thus, driven by the saturnine necessity that sneers at our puny resolutions, Lancelot began to meditate surrender.  For surrender of some sort must be—­either of life or ideal.  After so steadfast and protracted a struggle—­oh, it was cruel, it was terrible; how noble, how high-minded he had been; and this was how the fates dealt with him—­but at that moment—­

“Sw—­eet,” went the canary, and filled the room with its rapturous demi-semi-quavers, its throat swelling, its little body throbbing with joy of the sunshine.  And then Lancelot remembered—­not the joy of the sunshine, not the joy of life—­no, merely Mary Ann.

Noble! high-minded!  No, let Peter think that, let posterity think that.  But he could not cozen himself thus!  He had fallen—­horribly, vulgarly.  How absurd of him to set himself up as a saint, a martyr, an idealist!  He could not divide himself into two compartments like that and pretend that only one counted in his character.  Who was he to talk of dying for art?  No, he was but an everyday man.  He wanted Mary Ann—­yes, he might as well admit that to himself now.  It was no use humbugging himself any longer.  Why should he give her up?  She was his discovery, his treasure-trove, his property.