“The hideous time I have been going through!” he continued.  “It’s no use trying to give you an idea of it.  Of course you’d say it was all damned foolery.  Well, I shan’t go through it again, that’s one satisfaction.  I’ve done with women.  One reason why I loathe the thought of going on with that picture is because I still have the girl’s head to put in.  But I’ll do it.  I’ll go back and get to work at once.  If I can’t find a model, I’ll fake the head—­get it out of some woman’s paper where the fashions are illustrated; that’ll do very well.  I’ll go and see how the beastly thing looks.  It’s turned against the wall, and I wonder I haven’t put my boot through it.”

CHAPTER 17

Warburton waited for a quarter of an hour after the artist had gone, then set out for his walk.  The result of this unexpected conversation with Franks was excellent; the foolish fellow seemed to have recovered his common sense.  But Will felt ashamed of himself.  Of course he had acted solely with a view to the other’s good, seeing no hope but this of rescuing Franks from the slough in which he wallowed; nevertheless, he was stung with shame.  For the first time in his life he had asked repayment of money lent to a friend.  And he had done the thing blunderingly, without tact.  For the purpose in view, it would have been enough to speak of his own calamity; just the same effect would have been produced on Franks.  He saw this now, and writhed under the sense of his grossness.  The only excuse he could urge for himself was that Franks’ behaviour provoked and merited rough handling.  Still, he might have had perspicacity enough to understand that the artist was not so sunk in squalor as he pretended.

“Just like me,” he growled to himself, with a nervous twitching of the face.  “I’ve no presence of mind.  I see the right thing when it’s too late, and when I’ve made myself appear a bounder.  How many thousand times have I blundered in this way!  A man like me ought to live alone—­as I’ve a very fair chance of doing in future.”

His walk did him no good, and on his return he passed a black evening.  With Mrs. Hopper, who came as usual to get dinner for him, he held little conversation; in a few days he would have to tell her what had befallen him, or invent some lie to account for the change in his arrangements, and this again tortured Will’s nerves.  In one sense of the word, no man was less pretentious; but his liberality of thought and behaviour consisted with a personal pride which was very much at the mercy of circumstance.  Even as he could not endure subjection, so did he shrink from the thought of losing dignity in the eyes of his social inferiors.  Mere poverty and lack of ease did not frighten him at all; he had hardly given a thought as yet to that aspect of misfortune.  What most of all distressed his imagination (putting aside thought of his mother and sister) was the sudden fall from