He walked quickly up to Russell Square, impatient to steep himself anew in his work.  All sense of fatigue had left him.  Time seemed to be flying past him, and he rushing towards an unknown fate.  On the previous day he had received an enheartening, challenging, sardonic letter from his stepfather, who referred to politics and envisaged a new epoch for the country.  Edwin Clayhanger was a Radical of a type found only in the Midlands and the North.  For many years Clayhanger’s party, to which he was passionately faithful, had had no war-cry and no programme worthy of its traditions.  The increasing success of the campaign against Protection, and certain signs that the introduction of Chinese labour into South Africa could be effectively resisted, had excited the middle-aged provincial—­now an Alderman—­and he had managed to communicate fire to George.  But in George, though he sturdily shared his stepfather’s views, the resulting righteous energy was diverted to architectural creation.

III

The circumstances in which, about a month later, George lunched with the Ingram family at their flat in the Rue d’Athenes, near the Gare St. Lazare, Paris, had an appearance of the utmost simplicity and ordinariness.  He had been down to Staffordshire for a rest, and had returned unrested.  And then Mr. Enwright had suggested that it would do him good to go to Paris, even to go alone.  He went, with no plan, but having made careful arrangements for the telegraphing to him of the result of the competition, which was daily expected.  By this time he was very seriously convinced that there was no hope of him being among the selected six or ten, and he preferred to get the news away from London rather than in it; he felt that he could not face London on the day or the morrow of a defeat which would of course render his youthful audacity ridiculous.

He arrived in Paris on a Wednesday evening, and took a room in a maison meublee of the Rue de Seze.  Every inexperienced traveller in Paris has a friend who knows a lodging in Paris which he alleges is better and cheaper than any other lodging—­and which is not.  The house in the Rue de Seze was the economical paradise of Buckingham Smith, whom George had encountered again at the Buckingham Smith exhibition.  Buckingham Smith, with over half his pictures bearing the red seal that indicates ‘Sold,’ felt justified in posing to the younger George as a cosmopolitan expert—­especially as his opinions on modern French art were changing.  George spent three solitary and dejected days in Paris, affecting an interest in museums and architecture and French opera, and committing follies.  Near the end of the third day, a Saturday, he suddenly sent a threepenny express note to Lois Ingram.  He would have telephoned had he dared to use the French telephone.  On Sunday morning, an aproned valet having informed him that Monsieur was demanded at the telephone, he had