He shrugged his shoulders.  He had a volume of Verlaine in his hands, and he wandered off.  He tried to read, but his passion was too strong.  He thought of the stray amours to which he had been introduced by Flanagan, the sly visits to houses in a cul-de-sac, with the drawing-room in Utrecht velvet, and the mercenary graces of painted women.  He shuddered.  He threw himself on the grass, stretching his limbs like a young animal freshly awaked from sleep; and the rippling water, the poplars gently tremulous in the faint breeze, the blue sky, were almost more than he could bear.  He was in love with love.  In his fancy he felt the kiss of warm lips on his, and around his neck the touch of soft hands.  He imagined himself in the arms of Ruth Chalice, he thought of her dark eyes and the wonderful texture of her skin; he was mad to have let such a wonderful adventure slip through his fingers.  And if Lawson had done it why should not he?  But this was only when he did not see her, when he lay awake at night or dreamed idly by the side of the canal; when he saw her he felt suddenly quite different; he had no desire to take her in his arms, and he could not imagine himself kissing her.  It was very curious.  Away from her he thought her beautiful, remembering only her magnificent eyes and the creamy pallor of her face; but when he was with her he saw only that she was flat-chested and that her teeth were slightly decayed; he could not forget the corns on her toes.  He could not understand himself.  Would he always love only in absence and be prevented from enjoying anything when he had the chance by that deformity of vision which seemed to exaggerate the revolting?

He was not sorry when a change in the weather, announcing the definite end of the long summer, drove them all back to Paris.

XLVIII

When Philip returned to Amitrano’s he found that Fanny Price was no longer working there.  She had given up the key of her locker.  He asked Mrs. Otter whether she knew what had become of her; and Mrs. Otter, with a shrug of the shoulders, answered that she had probably gone back to England.  Philip was relieved.  He was profoundly bored by her ill-temper.  Moreover she insisted on advising him about his work, looked upon it as a slight when he did not follow her precepts, and would not understand that he felt himself no longer the duffer he had been at first.  Soon he forgot all about her.  He was working in oils now and he was full of enthusiasm.  He hoped to have something done of sufficient importance to send to the following year’s Salon.  Lawson was painting a portrait of Miss Chalice.  She was very paintable, and all the young men who had fallen victims to her charm had made portraits of her.  A natural indolence, joined with a passion for picturesque attitude, made her an excellent sitter; and she had enough technical knowledge to offer useful criticisms.  Since her passion for art was chiefly a passion to live the life of artists, she was quite content to neglect her own work.  She liked the warmth of the studio, and the opportunity to smoke innumerable cigarettes; and she spoke in a low, pleasant voice of the love of art and the art of love.  She made no clear distinction between the two.