Page 376 - of-human-bondage-

bad French, translating excitedly as he went along so that
Philip could scarcely understand, he read passages. It was
lamentable. Philip, puzzled, looked at the picture he was
painting: the mind behind that broad brow was trivial; and
the flashing, passionate eyes saw nothing in life but the ob-
vious. Philip was not satisfied with his portrait, and at the
end of a sitting he nearly always scraped out what he had
done. It was all very well to aim at the intention of the soul:
who could tell what that was when people seemed a mass of
contradictions? He liked Miguel, and it distressed him to
realise that his magnificent struggle was futile: he had ev-
erything to make a good writer but talent. Philip looked at
his own work. How could you tell whether there was any-
thing in it or whether you were wasting your time? It was
clear that the will to achieve could not help you and confi-
dence in yourself meant nothing. Philip thought of Fanny
Price; she had a vehement belief in her talent; her strength
of will was extraordinary.
‘If I thought I wasn’t going to be really good, I’d rather
give up painting,’ said Philip. ‘I don’t see any use in being a
second-rate painter.’
Then one morning when he was going out, the concierge
called out to him that there was a letter. Nobody wrote to
him but his Aunt Louisa and sometimes Hayward, and this
was a handwriting he did not know. The letter was as fol-
lows:
Please come at once when you get this. I couldn’t put
up with it any more. Please come yourself. I can’t bear the
thought that anyone else should touch me. I want you to