At last he said:  “You know, I’m simply dead.  I don’t think I can absorb anything more profitably.  Let’s go and sit down on one of the benches.”

“It’s better not to take too much art at a time,” Miss Price answered.

When they got outside he thanked her warmly for the trouble she had taken.

“Oh, that’s all right,” she said, a little ungraciously.  “I do it because I enjoy it.  We’ll go to the Louvre tomorrow if you like, and then I’ll take you to Durand-Ruel’s.”

“You’re really awfully good to me.”

“You don’t think me such a beast as the most of them do.”

“I don’t,” he smiled.

“They think they’ll drive me away from the studio; but they won’t; I shall stay there just exactly as long as it suits me.  All that this morning, it was Lucy Otter’s doing, I know it was.  She always has hated me.  She thought after that I’d take myself off.  I daresay she’d like me to go.  She’s afraid I know too much about her.”

Miss Price told him a long, involved story, which made out that Mrs. Otter, a humdrum and respectable little person, had scabrous intrigues.  Then she talked of Ruth Chalice, the girl whom Foinet had praised that morning.

“She’s been with every one of the fellows at the studio.  She’s nothing better than a street-walker.  And she’s dirty.  She hasn’t had a bath for a month.  I know it for a fact.”

Philip listened uncomfortably.  He had heard already that various rumours were in circulation about Miss Chalice; but it was ridiculous to suppose that Mrs. Otter, living with her mother, was anything but rigidly virtuous.  The woman walking by his side with her malignant lying positively horrified him.

“I don’t care what they say.  I shall go on just the same.  I know I’ve got it in me.  I feel I’m an artist.  I’d sooner kill myself than give it up.  Oh, I shan’t be the first they’ve all laughed at in the schools and then he’s turned out the only genius of the lot.  Art’s the only thing I care for, I’m willing to give my whole life to it.  It’s only a question of sticking to it and pegging away”

She found discreditable motives for everyone who would not take her at her own estimate of herself.  She detested Clutton.  She told Philip that his friend had no talent really; it was just flashy and superficial; he couldn’t compose a figure to save his life.  And Lawson: 

“Little beast, with his red hair and his freckles.  He’s so afraid of Foinet that he won’t let him see his work.  After all, I don’t funk it, do I?  I don’t care what Foinet says to me, I know I’m a real artist.”

They reached the street in which she lived, and with a sigh of relief Philip left her.

XLIV

But notwithstanding when Miss Price on the following Sunday offered to take him to the Louvre Philip accepted.  She showed him Mona Lisa.  He looked at it with a slight feeling of disappointment, but he had read till he knew by heart the jewelled words with which Walter Pater has added beauty to the most famous picture in the world; and these now he repeated to Miss Price.