at the confidant usually proceeded to another
corner of the room to entrust someone else with his innermost heart. He
became cynical after a while, especially when he found that the
principal points of difference from the rest of the world were identical
in every one of the numerous guests who sought his counsel and his
sympathy.

However, he never became cynical enough to distrust the whole school of
thought and admit that Father Viner's contempt was justifiable. If ever
he had any doubts, he was consoled by assuring himself that at any rate
these new friends were very artistic, and how important it was to be
artistic no one could realize who was not at school.

Under the pressure of his insistent temperament, Michael found his
collection of statuettes and ecclesiastical bric-a-brac very depressing.
As a youth of the Florentine Renaissance he could not congratulate
himself upon his room, which was much too much unlike either a Carpaccio
interior or an Aubrey Beardsley bedroom. Between these two his ambition
wavered.

One by one the statuettes were moved to the top of a wardrobe where for
a while they huddled, a dusty and devoted crowd, until one by one they
met martyrdom at the hands of the housemaid. In their place appeared
Della Robbia reliefs and terra-cotta statuettes of this or that famous
Greek youth. The muscular and tearful pictures of Guido Reni, the bland
insipidities of Bouguereau soon followed the statuettes, meeting a
comparable martyrdom by being hung in the servants' bedroom. The walls
of Michael's room were papered with a brown paper, which was intended to
be very artistic, but was really merely sad. It was lightened, however,
by various daring pictures in black and red that after only a very short
regard really did take shape as scenes of Montmartre. There were
landscapes of the Sussex downs, with a slight atmosphere of Japan and
landscapes of Japan that were not at all like Japan, but none the less
beautiful for that. The books of devotion were banished to the company
of superannuated Latin and Greek textbooks on the lower shelf of a
cupboard in the morning-room, whose upper shelf was stacked with tinned
fruits. Incense was still burnt, not as once to induce prayers to
ascend, but to stupefy Michael with scent and warmth into an imitation
of a drug-taker's listless paradise. This condition was accentuated by
erecting over the head of his bed a canopy of faded green satin, which
gave him acute aesth