a chair. He would have heard that popular author haranguing, pleading,
curiously on his defence, turning the thing this way and that.

"If _you'd_ gone over, Michael," that author argued, "you'd have done
precisely the same thing. If I'd stuck it out, we were, after all, of a
kind; We've got to be one thing or the other--isn't that so, Andriaovsky?
Since I made up my mind, I've faced only one way--only one way. I've kept
your ideal and theirs entirely separate and distinct. Not one single
beautiful phrase will you find in the _Martin Renards;_ I've cut 'em
out, every one. I may have ceased to worship, but I've profaned no
temple.... And think what I _might_ have done--what they all do! They
deal out the slush, but with an apologetic glance at the Art Shades;
_you_ know the style!--'Oh, Harrison; he does that detective rubbish, but
that's not Harrison; if Harrison liked to drop that he could be a fine
artist!'--I _haven't_ done that. I _haven't_ run with the hare and hunted
with the hounds. I _am_ just Harrison, who does that detective
rubbish!... These other chaps, Schofield and Connolly, _they're_ the real
sinners, Michael--the fellows who can't make up their minds to be one
thing or the other ('artists of considerable abilities'--ha! ha!).... Of
course you know Maschka's going to marry that chap? What'll _they_ do, do
you think? He'll scrape up a few pounds out of the stew where I find
thousands, marry her, and they'll set up a salon and talk the stuff the
chairs talked that night, you remember!... But you wait until I finish
your 'Life.'..."

I laid it all before him, almost as if I sought to propitiate him. I
might have been courting his patronage for his own "Life." Then, with a
start, I came to, to find myself talking nonsense to the portrait that
years before Andriaovsky had refused to sell me.

IV

The first check I experienced in the hitherto so easy flow of the "Life"
came at the chapter that dealt with Andriaovsky's attitude towards
"professionalism" in Art. He was inflexible on this point; there ought
not to be professional artists. When it was pointed out that his position
involved a premium upon the rich amateur, he merely replied that riches
had nothing to do with the question, and that the starver in the garret
was not excused for his poverty's sake from the observance of the
implacable conditions. He spoke literally of the "need" to create,
usually in the French term, _besogne_; and he was inclin