“Oh! Kühler,” said Froitzheim. “The very man I wanted to see. I am very proud about the picture—very proud. But I wanted to see you about young Mitchell. He is a friend of yours, isn’t he? He is behaving very badly to a young model. Such a pretty girl. Hetty Finch. You know her? She is in trouble through him, and he refuses to do anything for her. I’m told he has Nietzschean ideas. I sent for the girl. It is a very sad story and I have raised a subscription for her: fifty pounds to see her through. . . . Do try and bring Mitchell to reason.”
“I’ll do what I can,” replied Mendel, and he walked on to pay his daily homage to Van Eyck and Chardin, who were his heroes at the time.
That evening at the Paris Café he heard of another subscription having been raised for Hetty, and Calthrop growled and grumbled and said he had given her twenty pounds.
Mendel reckoned it up and he found that she was being paid for her delinquency more than he could hope to receive for many months of painful work.
As he finished his calculation he was amazed to see Mitchell come in with Morrison, whom he had declared he could never face again, and when Mendel rose to go over and join them she gave him only a curt little nod which told him plainly that he was not wanted.
[II
LOGAN]
ONCE again Mendel decided that Mitchell, and with him London life, had fallen away from him. The Paris Café could never be the same again, and he plunged into despair, and thought seriously of accepting a Jewish girl with four hundred pounds whom a match-maker offered to him. Four hundred pounds was not to be sneezed at. It would keep him going for some years, so that he need not think of selling his pictures, which he always hated to part with. And the girl was just bearable.
The figure delighted his father and mother, for it showed them the high opinion of their wonder-son held among their own people.
It was terrible to him to find that he had very little pleasure in his work, which very often gave him excruciating pain. He took it to mean that he was coming to an end of his talent. Night after night he sat on his bed feeling that he must make an end of his life, but always there was some piece of painting that he must do in the morning, painful though it might be.