He had visited that town before, in the second year of his travels, and then had, for some months, camped in the land of Bohemia; in that strange holy land of art abandoned by its High Priests; in the land of true faith and sincere blasphemies; where, in the midst of strife for immortal truth, hollow idols sit in imbecile and hieratic poses looking with approving eyes and their tongues in their cheeks at the agitated crowds of neophytes bringing fuel to the undying blaze of the sacred fire. It is a land of dazzling clearness and of distorted shadows; a country loud with the brazen trumpetings of assertion, and eloquent with the whisper of honest hopes and high endeavours;—with the sighs of the, not less noble, failures; of not ignoble discouragements. Over it, the neophitic smoke of the sacred fire hangs thick; and the outer world looks with disapproval at the black and repulsive pall hiding the light, the faith, the sacrifices: sacrifices of youth, of burnt hearts, of many bright futures—of not a few convictions!

Stephen would not cross again the frontier of Bohemia. Not having been able to find in achievement the justification of his nebulous desires, he thought himself in all innocence unworthy to associate intimately with those men of so much more distinct aspirations. He had no friends there; did not care to try for friendships; feared to recommence again the weary round of misunderstandings ending in distastes. If any came to him they would be welcome. Meantime he would remain outside and wait. Nobody came. For months he lived alone; working a little, trying to find form before he had mastered the idea, listening to inward voices. A life ineffectual, joyless and tranquil.

He had found on the outskirts of Passy an almost ideal retreat. It was a pavilion in the court of a modern house that brought its shabby façade into line with the sordid range of the street. The pavilion, a much older structure, probably a remnant of a much more dignified building, had a ground floor and only one floor above. On the ground floor there were three rooms in which Stephen lived. A broad stone staircase gave access above to a large room extending over the three under it. It looked like a ball room exiled from more splendid regions, and its windows, seven of them, overlooked a triangular vestige of some garden—once spacious—now only large enough to accommodate three or four trees, that lived there—as if in a dungeon—between the high blind walls of neighbouring houses. Their pale foliage waved below the windows of the pavilion in a shimmer of green tints that seemed pale and delicate with the pathetic frailness of town children. The sunshine lay on their branches, penetrated no lower, entered the studio as if guessing of the vision of light and colour that unrolled itself there in the head of the restless and solitary man. Below in the damp and uniform gloom the grass sprang up, vigorous and conquering, over that desolate remnant of beauty; covering the ground thickly with a prosperous, flourishing growth in a triumph of undistinguishably similar blades that pressed thick, low, full of life around the foot of soaring trunks of the trees; the grass unconquerable, content with the gloom, disputing sustenance with the roots, vanquishing the slender trees that strove courageously even there to keep their heads in the splendour of sunshine. In the branches a colony of blackbirds—probably unconventional—who had been expelled from the ordered communities of the gardens of La Muette led a disorderly, noisy, fluttering, whistling kind of life; flying constantly across the windows in and out of their grimy and disreputable nests; and wondering, perhaps with compassion, at the big stone cage where dwelt an immense and unfortunate creature that could not fly, or whistle, or sing.

On the courtyard side the big room had only two windows; big windows from ceiling to floor, having a wrought iron guard that rose in a complicated design of arabesque to the height of a man's elbow. The court itself was gravel, with stone walks, right and left along the wings of the main house. In the middle of it a circular clump of flowering bushes, once upon a time ornamental and kept under the control of a stone border, had run wild and luxuriated now in incult freedom. Through the high main building a wide archway, a carriage archway, led into the street. Trailing under the archway, over the court; rising as high as the windows of Stephen's studio, a strong perfume of oranges carried amongst brick walls and over sooty bushes a romantic suggestion of dark foliage and golden fruit, of tepid breezes and clear sunshine, of rustling groves in a southern land. Outside, the street rattled, murmured, shouted: inharmonious and busy. Inside, the sweet scented silence was almost undisturbed by the feeble tapping of Ortega's hammer. Now and then, about once a week, a heavy van would stop before the archway and boxes of oranges streamed into the court on the backs of men that ran in, bent nearly double, and dumped their loads down with a low groan. Then Ortega's voice piped all day, thinly voluble, agitated and important. At times it would be drowned by the harsh tones of strident scolding under the recess of the archway. The noise would burst violently, rasp the air with the cruel sharpness of its spite, end in scornful exclamations drawling crescendo: "They will ruin you under your nose! Look at that man, José. You see nothing! I will teach him! But look! Look! All these oranges.... Sanctissima.... Look! You! José!" Old Ortega unshaven and dirty tripped about on his meagre shanks here and there like a man in extreme distress. And when the scolding had abruptly ceased his thin squeaky voice would be heard modulated and persuasive with tender intonations: "But Dolores! ... Don't ... Don't Dolocita! ... My dearest!"