approval.  She thought them vastly genteel.  He also entertained her with whatever jargon of art talk he managed to pick up.  Thus, though the urchin gave himself airs and invested himself with affectations, which rendered him intolerable to all of his own social status, except the placid Mrs. Seddon and the adoring Jane, he was under the continuous influence of a high ambition.  It made him ridiculous, but it preserved him from vicious and vulgar things.  If you are conscious of being a prince in disguise qualifying for butterfly entrance into your kingdom, it behoves you to behave in a princely manner, not to consort with lewd fellows and not to neglect opportunities for education.  You owe to yourself all the good that you can extract from the world.  Acting from this point of view, and guided by the practical advice of young Rowlatt, he attended evening classes, where he gulped down knowledge hungrily.  So, what with sitting and studying and backward and forward journeying, and educating Jane, and practising the accomplishments of a prince, and sleeping the long sound sleep of a tired youngster, Paul had no time to think of evil.  He was far too much absorbed in himself.

Meanwhile, of Bludston not a sign.  For all that he had heard of search being made for him, he might have been a runaway kitten.  Sometimes he wondered what steps the Buttons had taken in order to find him.  If they bad communicated with the police, surely, at some stage of their journey, Barney Bill would have been held up and questioned.  But had they even troubled to call in the police?  Barney Bill thought not, and Paul agreed.  The police were very unpopular in Budge Street—­almost as unpopular as Paul.  In all probability the Buttons were only too glad to be rid of him.  If he found no favour in the eyes of Mrs. Button, in the eyes of Button he was detestable.  Occasionally he spoke of them to Barney Bill on his rare appearances in London, but for prudential motives the latter had struck Bludston out of his itinerary and could give no information.  At last Paul ceased altogether to think of them.  They belonged to a far-distant past already becoming blurred in his memory.

So Paul lived his queer sedulous life, month after month, year after year, known among the studios as a quaint oddity, drawn out indulgently by the men, somewhat petted, monkey-fashion, by the women, forgotten by both when out of their presence, but developing imperceptibly day by day along the self-centring line.  A kindly adviser suggested a gymnasium to keep him in condition for professional purposes.  He took the advice, and in the course of time became a splendid young animal, a being so physically perfect as to be what the good vicar of Bludston had called him in tired jest—­a lusus naturae.  But though proud of his body as any finely formed human may honorably be, a far higher arrogance saved him from Narcissus vanity.  It was the inner and essential Paul and not the outer investiture that was born to great things.