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Beside Dan was Jasper Merton, sallow, clean-shaven, discontented in expression, his previous history unknown to the six studios. He painted altar pieces at low rates for high churches in poor districts, which paintings were usually the gift of benevolent and religiously-minded spinster ladies. He looked—as Barnabas had once said—as if he were wearing a hair shirt for the good of his soul, and as if the shirt were an extra-prickly one.

Beyond him was Alan Farley, who, like David of old, was “fair and of a ruddy countenance.” Nature had intended him for a cheerful soul, but art of the ultra-mystic type had taken him prisoner. He painted shadowy figures with silver stars on their brows, non-petalled roses, and purple chalices; he read Swinburne and the poems of Fiona Macleod, and talked about creative genius.

“Creative genius!” Barnabas had said to him one day. “Man, you don’t understand the first principles of it. Your painting is pure slither. Do you think creation is slither? It’s travail, it’s agonizing. What does your work cost you? Nothing. An airy fancy, half an hour’s mental indigestion, and there’s a canvas covered with purples, greys, and greens. The colour’s all right, but what on earth is the thing worth? I’m not talking monetary jargon. You say that purple mass in the corner is a veiled woman, and she’s talking through opal mists to a silver star. Who on earth’s going to find that out unless you go round like a kind of animated catalogue to your own pictures. Get hold of form, man. Study it. Draw—draw—draw—till you can express ideas tangibly. Leave poetry alone for a bit till you’re honoured with the power of understanding it. You’re being mentally sensual and don’t know it. You talk of passion! Great Scot! You don’t understand the meaning of the word, nor the A B C of nature.”