He was entirely puzzled, but fortunately at that moment the omelette came.  He divided it in two and they began to eat.  Philip did his best to talk of indifferent things, and it seemed as though Miss Price were making an effort on her side to be agreeable; but the luncheon was not altogether a success.  Philip was squeamish, and the way in which Miss Price ate took his appetite away.  She ate noisily, greedily, a little like a wild beast in a menagerie, and after she had finished each course rubbed the plate with pieces of bread till it was white and shining, as if she did not wish to lose a single drop of gravy.  They had Camembert cheese, and it disgusted Philip to see that she ate rind and all of the portion that was given her.  She could not have eaten more ravenously if she were starving.

Miss Price was unaccountable, and having parted from her on one day with friendliness he could never tell whether on the next she would not be sulky and uncivil; but he learned a good deal from her:  though she could not draw well herself, she knew all that could be taught, and her constant suggestions helped his progress.  Mrs. Otter was useful to him too, and sometimes Miss Chalice criticised his work; he learned from the glib loquacity of Lawson and from the example of Clutton.  But Fanny Price hated him to take suggestions from anyone but herself, and when he asked her help after someone else had been talking to him she would refuse with brutal rudeness.  The other fellows, Lawson, Clutton, Flanagan, chaffed him about her.

“You be careful, my lad,” they said, “she’s in love with you.”

“Oh, what nonsense,” he laughed.

The thought that Miss Price could be in love with anyone was preposterous.  It made him shudder when he thought of her uncomeliness, the bedraggled hair and the dirty hands, the brown dress she always wore, stained and ragged at the hem:  he supposed she was hard up, they were all hard up, but she might at least be clean; and it was surely possible with a needle and thread to make her skirt tidy.

Philip began to sort his impressions of the people he was thrown in contact with.  He was not so ingenuous as in those days which now seemed so long ago at Heidelberg, and, beginning to take a more deliberate interest in humanity, he was inclined to examine and to criticise.  He found it difficult to know Clutton any better after seeing him every day for three months than on the first day of their acquaintance.  The general impression at the studio was that he was able; it was supposed that he would do great things, and he shared the general opinion; but what exactly he was going to do neither he nor anybody else quite knew.  He had worked at several studios before Amitrano’s, at Julian’s, the Beaux Arts, and MacPherson’s, and was remaining longer at Amitrano’s than anywhere because he found himself more left alone.  He was not fond of showing his work, and unlike most of the young men who were studying