the frame, another followed, spilling over on to the exposed
photograph. He swore more vigorously, and dashed to the
kitchen, where he bathed his hands. The kitchen was the
same size as the sitting room; through it was a bedroom.
This completed his home. He was renting the flat furnished:
of all the objects that encumbered it none were his own
except the photograph frame, the Cupids, and the books.

"Damn, damn, damnation!" he murmured, together with such
other words as he had learnt from older men. Then he raised
his hand to his forehead and said, "Oh, damn it all--" which
meant something different. He pulled himself together. He
drank a little tea, black and silent, that still survived
upon an upper shelf. He swallowed some dusty crumbs of
cake. Then he went back to the sitting-room, settled
himself anew, and began to read a volume of Ruskin.

"Seven miles to the north of Venice--"

How perfectly the famous chapter opens! How supreme its
command of admonition and of poetry! The rich man is
speaking to us from his gondola.

"Seven miles to the north of Venice the banks of sand
which nearer the city rise little above low-water mark
attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at
last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into
shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea."

Leonard was trying to form his style on Ruskin: he