Page 297 - of-human-bondage-

icans’ costume; he thought it showed the romantic spirit.
Miss Price asked him the time.
‘I must be getting along to the studio,’ she said. ‘Are you
going to the sketch classes?’
Philip did not know anything about them, and she told
him that from five to six every evening a model sat, from
whom anyone who liked could go and draw at the cost of
fifty centimes. They had a different model every day, and it
was very good practice.
‘I don’t suppose you’re good enough yet for that. You’d
better wait a bit.’
‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t try. I haven’t got anything
else to do.’
They got up and walked to the studio. Philip could not
tell from her manner whether Miss Price wished him to
walk with her or preferred to walk alone. He remained from
sheer embarrassment, not knowing how to leave her; but
she would not talk; she answered his questions in an ungra-
cious manner.
A man was standing at the studio door with a large dish
into which each person as he went in dropped his half franc.
The studio was much fuller than it had been in the morn-
ing, and there was not the preponderance of English and
Americans; nor were women there in so large a proportion.
Philip felt the assemblage was more the sort of thing he had
expected. It was very warm, and the air quickly grew fetid.
It was an old man who sat this time, with a vast gray beard,
and Philip tried to put into practice the little he had learned
in the morning; but he made a poor job of it; he realised that

Of Human Bondage