The hall was lit by great white lights, low down, which emphasised the shadows on the faces; all the lines seemed to harden under it, and the colours were most crude.
It was a sordid scene.
Philip leaned over the rail, staring down, and he ceased to hear the music.
They danced furiously.
They danced round the room, slowly, talking very little, with all their attention given to the dance.
The room was hot, and their faces shone with sweat.
It seemed to Philip that they had thrown off the guard which people wear on their expression, the homage to convention, and he saw them now as they really were.
In that moment of abandon they were strangely animal: some were foxy and some were wolf-like; and others had the long, foolish face of sheep.
Their skins were sallow from the unhealthy life they led and the poor food they ate.
Their features were blunted by mean interests, and their little eyes were shifty and cunning.
There was nothing of nobility in their bearing, and you felt that for all of them life was a long succession of petty concerns and sordid thoughts.
The air was heavy with the musty smell of humanity.
But they danced furiously as though impelled by some strange power within them, and it seemed to Philip that they were driven forward by a rage for enjoyment.
They were seeking desperately to escape from a world of horror.
The desire for pleasure which Cronshaw said was the only motive of human action urged them blindly on, and the very vehemence of the desire seemed to rob it of all pleasure.
They were hurried on by a great wind, helplessly, they knew not why and they knew not whither.
Fate seemed to tower above them, and they danced as though everlasting darkness were beneath their feet.
Their silence was vaguely alarming.
It was as if life terrified them and robbed them of power of speech so that the shriek which was in their hearts died at their throats.
Their eyes were haggard and grim; and notwithstanding the beastly lust that disfigured them, and the meanness of their faces, and the cruelty, notwithstanding the stupidness which was worst of all, the anguish of those fixed eyes made all that crowd terrible and pathetic.
Philip loathed them, and yet his heart ached with the infinite pity which filled him.
He took his coat from the cloak-room and went out into the bitter coldness of the night.
L
Philip could not get the unhappy event out of his head.
What troubled him most was the uselessness of Fanny's effort.
No one could have worked harder than she, nor with more sincerity; she believed in herself with all her heart; but it was plain that self-confidence meant very little, all his friends had it, Miguel Ajuria among the rest; and Philip was shocked by the contrast between the Spaniard's heroic endeavour and the triviality of the thing he attempted.
The unhappiness of Philip's life at school had called up in him the power of self-analysis; and this vice, as subtle as drug-taking, had taken possession of him so that he had now a peculiar keenness in the dissection of his feelings.
He could not help seeing that art affected him differently from others.
A fine picture gave Lawson an immediate thrill.
His appreciation was instinctive.
Even Flanagan felt certain things which Philip was obliged to think out.
His own appreciation was intellectual.
He could not help thinking that if he had in him the artistic temperament (he hated the phrase, but could discover no other) he would feel beauty in the emotional, unreasoning way in which they did.
He began to wonder whether he had anything more than a superficial cleverness of the hand which enabled him to copy objects with accuracy.
That was nothing.
He had learned to despise technical dexterity.
The important thing was to feel in terms of paint.
Lawson painted in a certain way because it was his nature to, and through the imitativeness of a student sensitive to every influence, there pierced individuality.
Philip looked at his own portrait of Ruth Chalice, and now that three months had passed he realised that it was no more than a servile copy of Lawson.
He felt himself barren.
He painted with the brain, and he could not help knowing that the only painting worth anything was done with the heart.
He had very little money, barely sixteen hundred pounds, and it would be necessary for him to practise the severest economy.
He could not count on earning anything for ten years.
The history of painting was full of artists who had earned nothing at all.
He must resign himself to penury; and it was worth while if he produced work which was immortal; but he had a terrible fear that he would never be more than second-rate.
Was it worth while for that to give up one's youth, and the gaiety of life, and the manifold chances of being?
He knew the existence of foreign painters in Paris enough to see that the lives they led were narrowly provincial.
He knew some who had dragged along for twenty years in the pursuit of a fame which always escaped them till they sunk into sordidness and alcoholism.
Fanny's suicide had aroused memories, and Philip heard ghastly stories of the way in which one person or another had escaped from despair.
He remembered the scornful advice which the master had given poor Fanny: it would have been well for her if she had taken it and given up an attempt which was hopeless.