A fly settled on his back—­a damp, sluggish fly that had survived the winter—­and it crawled horribly up his spine.  He bore it for a few moments, and then his over-excited nerves gave way and he dashed his hand behind him.  Somebody laughed.  He raised his clenched fists and glared at the class.

“Ay, yo’ can laugh—­you can laugh till yo’ bust!” he cried, falling back into his Lancashire accent.  “But yo’ll never see me, here agen.  Never, never, never, so help me God!”

He rushed away.  The head of the school followed him and, while he was dressing, reasoned with him.

“Nay,” said Paul.  “Never agen.  Aw’m doan wi’ th’ whole business.”

And as Paul walked home through the hurrying streets, he thought regretfully of twenty speeches which would have more adequately signified his indignant retirement from the profession.

CHAPTER VI

Paul’s model-self being dead, he regarded it with complacency and set his foot on it, little doubting that it was another stepping-stone.

He spoke loftily of his independence.

“But how are you going to earn your living?” asked Jane, the practical.

“I shall follow one of the arts,” Paul replied.  “I think I am a poet, but I might be a painter or a musician.”

“You do sing and play lovely,” said Jane.

He had recently purchased from a pawnshop a second-hand mandoline, which he had mastered by the aid of a sixpenny handbook, and he would play on it accompaniments to sentimental ballads which he sang in a high baritone.

“I’ll not choose yet awhile,” said Paul, disregarding the tribute.  “Something will happen.  The ‘moving finger’ will point—­”

“What moving finger?”

“The finger of Destiny,” said Paul.

And, as the superb youth predicted, something did happen a day or two afterwards.

They were walking in Regent Street, and stopped, as was their wont, before a photographer’s window where portraits of celebrities were exposed to view.  Paul loved this window, bad loved it from the moment of discovery, a couple of years before.  It was a Temple of Fame.  The fact of your portrait being exhibited, with your style and title printed below, marked you as one of the great ones of the earth.  Often he had said to Jane:  “When I am there you’ll be proud, won’t you?”

And she had looked up to him adoringly and wondered why he was not there already.

It was Paul’s habit to scrutinize the faces of those who had achieved greatness, Archbishops, Field-Marshals, Cabinet Ministers, and to speculate on the quality of mind that had raised them to their high estate; and often he would shift his position, so as to obtain a glimpse of his own features in the plate-glass window, and compare them with those of the famous.  Thus he would determine that he had the brow of the divine, the nose of the statesman and the firm lips of the soldier.  It was a stimulating pastime.  He was born to great things; but to what great things he knew not.  The sphere in which his glory should be fulfilled was as yet hidden in the mists of time.