ery-seat at the Lyceum Theatre, then in
its early fame, and hot discussions of Irving and Ellen Terry with
such artistic or literary acquaintance as he had made through the
life-school or elsewhere--these had been his only distractions. He
stood amazed before his own virtues. He drank little--smoked little.
As for women--he thought with laughter or wrath of Phoebe's touch of
jealousy! There was an extremely pretty girl--a fair-haired, conscious
minx--drawing in the same room with him at the British Museum.
Evidently she would have been glad to capture him; and he had loftily
denied her. If he had ever been as susceptible as Phoebe thought him,
he was susceptible no more. Life burned with sterner fire!

And yet, for all these self-denials, Morrison's money and his own
savings were nearly gone. Funds might hold out till after Christmas.
What then?

He had heard once or twice from Morrison, asking for news of the
pictures promised. Lately he had left the letters unanswered; but he
lived in terror of a visit. For he had nothing to offer him--neither
money nor pictures. His only picture so far--as distinguished from
exercises--was the 'Genius Loci.' He had begun that in a moment of
weariness with his student work, basing it on a number of studies
of Phoebe's head and face he had brought South with him. He had been
lucky enough to find a model very much resembling Phoebe in figure;
and now, suddenly, the picture had become his passion, the centre of
all his hopes. It astonished himself; he saw his artistic advance in
it writ large; of late he had been devoting himself entirely to it,
wrapt, like the body of Hector, in a heavenly cloud that lifted him
from the earth! If the picture sold--and it would surely sell--then
all paths were clear. Morrison should be paid; and Phoebe have her
rights. Let it only be well hung at the Academy, and well sold to some
discriminating buyer--and John Fenwick henceforward would owe no man
anything--whether money or favour.

At this point he returned to his picture, grappling with it afresh in
a feverish pleasure. He caught up a mirror and looked at it reversed;
he put in a bold accent or two; fumed over the lack of brilliancy in
some colour he had bought the day before; and ended in a fresh burst
of satisfaction. By Jove, it was good! Lord Findon had been evidently
'bowled over' by it--Cuningham too. As for that sour-faced fellow,
Watson, what did it matter what he thought?

It _must_ succ