for pleasure which Cronshaw said was the only motive of human action urged them blindly on, and the very vehemence of the desire seemed to rob it of all pleasure.  They were hurried on by a great wind, helplessly, they knew not why and they knew not whither.  Fate seemed to tower above them, and they danced as though everlasting darkness were beneath their feet.  Their silence was vaguely alarming.  It was as if life terrified them and robbed them of power of speech so that the shriek which was in their hearts died at their throats.  Their eyes were haggard and grim; and notwithstanding the beastly lust that disfigured them, and the meanness of their faces, and the cruelty, notwithstanding the stupidness which was worst of all, the anguish of those fixed eyes made all that crowd terrible and pathetic.  Philip loathed them, and yet his heart ached with the infinite pity which filled him.

He took his coat from the cloak-room and went out into the bitter coldness of the night.

L

Philip could not get the unhappy event out of his head.  What troubled him most was the uselessness of Fanny’s effort.  No one could have worked harder than she, nor with more sincerity; she believed in herself with all her heart; but it was plain that self-confidence meant very little, all his friends had it, Miguel Ajuria among the rest; and Philip was shocked by the contrast between the Spaniard’s heroic endeavour and the triviality of the thing he attempted.  The unhappiness of Philip’s life at school had called up in him the power of self-analysis; and this vice, as subtle as drug-taking, had taken possession of him so that he had now a peculiar keenness in the dissection of his feelings.  He could not help seeing that art affected him differently from others.  A fine picture gave Lawson an immediate thrill.  His appreciation was instinctive.  Even Flanagan felt certain things which Philip was obliged to think out.  His own appreciation was intellectual.  He could not help thinking that if he had in him the artistic temperament (he hated the phrase, but could discover no other) he would feel beauty in the emotional, unreasoning way in which they did.  He began to wonder whether he had anything more than a superficial cleverness of the hand which enabled him to copy objects with accuracy.  That was nothing.  He had learned to despise technical dexterity.  The important thing was to feel in terms of paint.  Lawson painted in a certain way because it was his nature to, and through the imitativeness of a student sensitive to every influence, there pierced individuality.  Philip looked at his own portrait of Ruth Chalice, and now that three months had passed he realised that it was no more than a servile copy of Lawson.  He felt himself barren.  He painted with the brain, and he could not help knowing that the only painting worth anything was done with the heart.