As he read
them he saw genius slipping, or even wallowing in pits full of slime.
Men showered their gold out of blackness. They rose on strong pinions
only to sink down below the level surely of even the average man. And
angry passions attended them along the pilgrimage of their lives, seemed
born and bred of their very being. Few books made Claude feel so sad as
the books which chronicled the genius of men submitted to the conditions
which prevail in the ardent struggle for life.

He closed them, and was happy with his own quiet fate, his apparently
humdrum existence, which provided no material for any biographer, the
fate of the unknown man who does not wish to be known.

But, of course, there was in him, as there is in almost every man of
strong imagination and original talent, a restlessness like that of the
physically strong man who has never tried and proved his strength in any
combat.

Mrs. Shiffney had appealed to his restlessness, which had driven Claude
forth into the darkness of evening and now companioned him along the
London ways. He knew no woman of her type well, and something in him
instinctively shrank from her type. As he had said to Mrs. Mansfield, he
dreaded, yet he was aware that he might be fascinated by, the monster
with teeth and claws always watchful and hungry for pleasure. And the
voice that murmured, "To-morrow we die! To-morrow we die!" was like a
groan in his ears. But now, as he walked, he was almost inclined to
scold his imagination as a companion which led him into excesses, to
rebel against his own instinct. Why should he refuse any pleasant
temptation that came in his way? Why should he decline to go on the
yacht? Was he not a prude, a timorous man to be so afraid for his own
safety, not of body, but of mind and soul? Mrs. Shiffney's remarks about
Continental artists stuck in his mind. Ought he not to fling off his
armor, to descend boldly into the mid-stream of life, to let it take
him on its current whither it would?

He was conscious that if once he abandoned his cautious existence he
might respond to many calls which, as yet, had not appealed to him. He
fancied that he was one of those natures which cannot be half-hearted,
which cannot easily mingle, arrange, portion out, take just so much of
this and so much of that. The recklessness that looked out of Mrs.
Shiffney's eyes spoke to something in him that might be friendly to it,
though something else in him disliked, despised,