“No,” she said seriously.  “I don’t think it is.  Everybody has got a self to consider.  I don’t look on it as ego-what-d’-you-call-it to strike out for myself instead of going on helping mother to mind the shop.  So why should you?”

“Besides, I owe a duty to my parents, don’t I?” he asked eagerly.

But here Jane took her own line.  “I can’t see that you do, considering that they’ve done nothing for you.”

“They’ve done everything for me,” he protested vehemently.  “They’ve made me what I am.”

“They didn’t take much trouble about it,” said Jane.

They squabbled for a while after the manner of boy and girl.  At last she cried:  “Don’t you see I’m proud of you for yourself and not for your silly old parents?  What have they got to do with me?  And besides, you’ll never find them.”

“I don’t think you know what you’re talking about,” he said loftily.  “It is time we were getting home.”

He walked on for some time stiffly, his head in the air, not condescending to speak.  She had uttered blasphemy.  He would find his parents, he vowed to himself, if only to spite Jane.  Presently his ear caught a little sniff, and looking down, saw her dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief.  His heart softened at once.  “Never mind,” said he.  “You didn’t mean it.”

“It’s only because I love you, Paul,” she murmured wretchedly.

“That’s all right,” he said.  “Let us go in here”—­they were passing a confectioner’s—­“and we’ll have some jam-puffs.”

Paul went to his friend Rowlatt, who had already heard, through one of his assistants who had a friend in the Life School, of the dramatic end of the model’s career.

“I quite sympathize with you,” Rowlatt laughed.  “I’ve wondered how you stuck it so long.  What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going on the stage.”

“How are you going to get there?”

“I don’t know,” said Paul, “but if I knew an actor, he would be able to tell me.  I thought perhaps you might know an actor.”

“I do—­one or two,” replied Rowlatt; “but they’re just ordinary actors—­not managers; and I shouldn’t think they’d be able to do anything for you.”

“Except what I say,” Paul persisted.  “They’ll tell me how one sets about being an actor.”

Rowlatt scribbled a couple of introductions on visiting cards, and Paul went away satisfied.  He called on the two actors.  The first, in atrabiliar mood, advised him to sweep crossings, black shoes, break stones by the roadside, cart manure, sell tripe or stocks and shares, blow out his brains rather than enter a profession over whose portals was inscribed the legend, Lasciate ogni speranza—­he snapped his finger and thumb to summon memory as if it were a dog.

“Voi che intrate,” continued Paul, delighted at showing off the one Italian tag he had picked up from his reading.  And filled with one of the purest joys of the young literary life and therefore untouched by pessimistic counsel, he left the despairing actor.