straight and smart in new paint and gilding. But Julien kept me at a
distance, and the rare occasions when he favoured me with his society
only served to prepare my mind for the friendship which awaited me, and
which was destined to absorb some years of my life.

In the studio there were some eighteen or twenty young men, and among
these there were some four or five from whom I could learn; there were
also some eight or nine young English girls. We sat round in a circle
and drew from the model. And this reversal of all the world's opinions
and prejudices was to me singularly delightful; I loved the sense of
unreality that the exceptional nature of our life in this studio
conveyed. Besides, the women themselves were young and interesting, and
were, therefore, one of the charms of the place, giving, as they did,
that sense of sex which is so subtle a mental pleasure, and which is, in
its outward aspect, so interesting to the eye--the gowns, the hair
lifted, showing the neck; the earrings, the sleeves open at the elbow.
Though all this was very dear to me I did not fall in love: but he who
escapes a woman's dominion generally comes under the sway of some friend
who ever exerts a strange attractiveness, and fosters a sort of
dependency that is not healthful or valid: and although I look back with
undiminished delight on the friendship I contracted about this time--a
friendship which permeated and added to my life--I am nevertheless
forced to recognise that, however suitable it may have been in my
special case, in the majority of instances it would have proved but a
shipwrecking reef, on which a young man's life would have gone to
pieces. What saved me was the intensity of my passion for Art, and a
moral revolt against any action that I thought could or would definitely
compromise me in that direction. I was willing to stray a little from my
path, but never further than a single step, which I could retrace when I
pleased. One day I raised my eyes, and saw there was a new-comer in the