[...] He never spoke about art, was ever ready to sing and swig and carouse, yet suddenly a strange gloom would come over him and he would not leave his room or let anyone in, and only his roommate, lowly Simpson, would see what he was up to. What Frank created during these two or three days of ill-humored isolation he either hid or destroyed, and then, as if having paid an agonizing tribute to his vice, he would again become his merry, uncomplicated self. Only once did he bring this up with Simpson.

“You see,” he said, wrinkling his limpid forehead and forcefully knocking the ashes from his pipe, “I feel that there is something about art, and painting in particular, that is effeminate, morbid, unworthy of a strong man. I try to struggle with this demon because I know how it can ruin people. If I yield to it completely, then, instead of a peaceful, ordered existence with finite distress and finite delights, with those precise rules without which any game loses its appeal, I shall be doomed to constant chaos, tumult, God knows what. I’ll be tormented to my dying day, I shall become like one of those wretches I’ve run into in Chelsea, those vain, long-haired fools in velvet jackets—harried, weak, enamored only of their sticky palettes.…”