Lawson was painting with infinite labour, working till he could hardly stand for days and then scraping out all he had done.  He would have exhausted the patience of anyone but Ruth Chalice.  At last he got into a hopeless muddle.

“The only thing is to take a new canvas and start fresh,” he said.  “I know exactly what I want now, and it won’t take me long.”

Philip was present at the time, and Miss Chalice said to him: 

“Why don’t you paint me too?  You’ll be able to learn a lot by watching Mr. Lawson.”

It was one of Miss Chalice’s delicacies that she always addressed her lovers by their surnames.

“I should like it awfully if Lawson wouldn’t mind.”

“I don’t care a damn,” said Lawson.

It was the first time that Philip set about a portrait, and he began with trepidation but also with pride.  He sat by Lawson and painted as he saw him paint.  He profited by the example and by the advice which both Lawson and Miss Chalice freely gave him.  At last Lawson finished and invited Clutton in to criticise.  Clutton had only just come back to Paris.  From Provence he had drifted down to Spain, eager to see Velasquez at Madrid, and thence he had gone to Toledo.  He stayed there three months, and he was returned with a name new to the young men:  he had wonderful things to say of a painter called El Greco, who it appeared could only be studied in Toledo.

“Oh yes, I know about him,” said Lawson, “he’s the old master whose distinction it is that he painted as badly as the moderns.”

Clutton, more taciturn than ever, did not answer, but he looked at Lawson with a sardonic air.

“Are you going to show us the stuff you’ve brought back from Spain?” asked Philip.

“I didn’t paint in Spain, I was too busy.”

“What did you do then?”

“I thought things out.  I believe I’m through with the Impressionists; I’ve got an idea they’ll seem very thin and superficial in a few years.  I want to make a clean sweep of everything I’ve learnt and start fresh.  When I came back I destroyed everything I’d painted.  I’ve got nothing in my studio now but an easel, my paints, and some clean canvases.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet.  I’ve only got an inkling of what I want.”

He spoke slowly, in a curious manner, as though he were straining to hear something which was only just audible.  There seemed to be a mysterious force in him which he himself did not understand, but which was struggling obscurely to find an outlet.  His strength impressed you.  Lawson dreaded the criticism he asked for and had discounted the blame he thought he might get by affecting a contempt for any opinion of Clutton’s; but Philip knew there was nothing which would give him more pleasure than Clutton’s praise.  Clutton looked at the portrait for some time in silence, then glanced at Philip’s picture, which was standing on an easel.