meekly. Paul believed in himself; the boy didn't. Almost from the
beginning he usurped an ascendancy over the little household. For
all their having lived in the great maelstrom of London, he found
his superficial experience of life larger than that of mother and
daughter. They had never seen machinery at work, did not know the
difference between an elm and a beech and had never read Sir Walter
Scott. Mrs. Seddon, thin, careworn and slackly good-natured, ever
lamented the loss of an astonishingly brilliant husband; Jane was
markedly the more competent of the two. She had character, and, even
while slaving for the romantic youth, made it clear to him that for
no other man alive would she so demean herself. Paul resolved to
undertake her education.

The months slipped by golden with fulfilment. News of the beautiful
boy model went the round of the studios. Those were simpler times
(although not so very long ago) in British art than the present, and
the pretty picture was still in vogue. As Mr. Rowlatt, the young
architect, had foretold, Paul had no difficulty in obtaining work.
Indeed, it was fatally easy. Mr. Cyrus Rowlatt, R.A., had launched
him. Being fabulously paid, he thought his new profession the most
aristocratic calling in the world. In a remarkably short time he was
able to repay Barney Bill. The day when he purchased the postal
order was the proudest in his life. The transaction gave him a
princely feeling. He alone of boys, by special virtue of his origin,
was capable of such a thing. Again, his welcome in the painting
world confirmed him in the belief that he was a personage, born to
great things. Posed on the model throne, the object of the painter's
intense scrutiny, he swelled ingenuously with the conviction of his
supreme importance. The lazy luxury of the model's life appealed to
his sensuous temperament. He loved the warmth, the artistic setting