Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/314

 sink into the familiar thoughts, and there was the little terra cotta Voltaire, grinning more cynically than ever. Olga was here too, peering at him from every corner, now the Columbine, now the sphinx, then the practical girl cracking eggs for an omelette, or the shy girl at the foot of Hellgren's stairs, but eventually the stony-faced young woman perched on Janvier's piano. That first impression of her was the one he always ended by confronting. If one only had the sense, he reflected, always to abide by first impressions!

Aside from the question of moral salvation, there was now a material necessity for finding a job, for his funds, like his clothes, were at an unprecedentedly low ebb, and he needed, as he expressed it to himself, at least one of everything. At Levanto the project had seemed as simple and logical as any episode in an Alger book of pluck and luck; here, in the old prison, it seemed a forlorn hope. For of all the men in Paris whose acquaintance he could claim, what one of them could give him so much as a hint? The only face that kept recurring in his thoughts, smilingly, was that of a young American in the bank where he went to cash his cheques; and grasping at the hope held out by this smile before all his good intentions should go into the making of a new pavement for hell, he picked up his hat and walked out of the house.

A new fear had now got hold of him. Though, as heaven so well knew, he would never be a painter,—neither a Casimir nor, and the thought yielded a bitter