Later that evening, Edwin sat at a small deal table in the embrasure of the dormer window of the empty next to his bedroom. During the between tea and the with Big James he had formally planted his flag in that room. He had swept it out with a long-brush, while Clara stood at the door at the spectacle and telling him that he had no right thus to territory in the absence of the overlord. He had mounted a pair of steps, and put a lot of through a trap at the head of the stairs into the . And he had got a table, a lamp, and a chair. That was all that he needed for the moment. He had gone out to meet Big James with his head quite half-full of this vague attic-project, but the night sights of Bursley, and especially the music at the Dragon, and still more especially the dancing at the Dragon, had almost expelled the attic-project from his head. When he returned unobtrusively into the house and learnt from a disturbed Mrs Nixon, who was sewing in the kitchen, that he was understood to be in his new attic, and that his sisters had gone to bed, the of the attic had instantly resumed much of its power over him, and he had hurried upstairs with a slice of bread and half a cold sausage. He had eaten the food absently in while staring at the cover of “Cazenove’s Architectural Views of European Capitals,” abstracted from the shop without payment. Then he had pinned part of a sheet of cartridge-paper on an old drawing-board which he , and had sat down. For his purpose the paper ought to have been soaked and stretched on the board with paste, but that would have meant a delay of seven or eight hours, and he was not willing to wait. Though he could not concentrate his mind to begin, his mind could not be reconciled to waiting. So he had to draw his picture in pencil outline, and then stretch the paper early on Sunday morning; it would dry during . His new box of paints, a cracked T-square, and some india-rubber also lay on the table.  
He had chosen “View of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame Paris, from the Pont des Arts.” It pleased him by the coloration of the old houses in front of Notre-Dame, and the reflections in the water of the Seine, and the blueness of the twin towers amid the pale grey clouds of a Parisian sky. A romantic scene! He wanted to copy it exactly, to recreate it from beginning to end, to feel the thrill of producing each wonderful effect himself. Yet he sat inactive. He sat and gazed at the slope of Trafalgar Road with its double row of yellow jewels, beautifully in fire to the of the horizon and there losing itself in the deep and solemn purple of the summer night; and he thought how ugly and commonplace all that was, and how different from all that were the noble capitals of Europe. Scarcely a sound came through the open window; song doubtless still at the Dragon, and revellers would not for hours awake the street on their way to the atmosphere of home.
 
Two.
He had no resolution to take up the pencil. Yet after the Male Glee Party had sung “Loud Ocean’s Roar,” he remembered that he had had a most clear and distinct impulse to begin drawing architecture at once, and to do something grand and fine, as grand and fine as the singing, something that would thrill people as the singing thrilled. If he had not rushed home instantly it was because he had been held back by the stronger desire to hear more music and by the hope of further novel and exciting sensations. But Florence the clog-dancer had easily diverted the seeming-powerful current of his mind. He wanted as much as ever to do things, and to do them soon, but it appeared to him that he must think out first the enigmatic subject of Florence. Never had he seen any female creature as he saw her, and ephemeral images of her were continually forming and dissolving before him. He could come to no conclusion at all about the subject of Florence. Only his boyish pride was gradually being beaten back by an oncoming idea that up to that very evening he had been a sort of rather silly kid with no eyes in his head.
 
It was in order to ignore for a time this unsettling and humiliating idea that, finally, he began to copy the outlines of the Parisian scene on his cartridge-paper. He was in no way a skilled draughtsman, but he had in pencils and colours, and he had lately picked up from a handbook the hint that in blocking out a drawing the first thing to do was to observe what points were under what points, and what points horizontal with what points. He seemed to see the whole secret of draughtsmanship in this priceless counsel, which, indeed, with an elementary knowledge of geometry acquired at school, and the familiarity of his fingers with a pencil, constituted the whole of his technical equipment. All the rest was desire. Happily the architectural nature of the subject made it more than, say, a rural landscape to the use of a T-square and common sense. And Edwin considered that he was doing rather well until, quitting measurements and rulings, he arrived at the stage of drawing the detail of the towers. Then at once the dream of perfect began to fade at the edges, and the crust of faith to yield . Each stroke was a falling-away from the ideal, a blow to hope.
 
And suddenly a yawn surprised him, and recalled him to the existence of his body. He thought: “I can’t really be tired. It would be absurd to go to bed.” For his theory had long been that the notions of parents about bedtime were indeed absurd, and that he would be just as after three hours sleep as after ten. And now that he was a man he meant to practise his theory so far as circumstances allowed. He looked at his watch. It was turned half-past eleven. A delicious wave of joy and of satisfaction him. He had never been up so late, within his recollection, save on a few occasions when even infants were allowed to be up late. He was alone, , master of his time and his activity, his mind charged with novel impressions, and a congenial work in progress. Alone? ... It was as if he was spiritually alone in the vast of the night. It was as if he could the unconscious forms of all humanity, sleeping. This feeling that only he had preserved consciousness and energy, that he was the sole active possessor of the mysterious night, him in the most manner. He had not been so nobly happy in his life. And at the same time he was proud, in a childlike way, of being up so late.
 
Three.
He heard the door being pushed open, and he gave a jump and turned his head. His father stood in the entrance to the attic.
 
“Hello, father!” he said weakly, ingratiatingly.
 
“What art doing at this time o’ night, lad?” Darius Clayhanger demanded.
 
Strange to say, the was not angered by the sight in front of him. Edwin knew that his father would probably come home from Manchester on the mail train, which would stop to set down a passenger at Shawport by suitable arrangement. And he had expected that his father would go to bed, as usual on such evenings, after having eaten the supper left for him in the . His father’s bedroom was next door to the sitting-room. Save for Mrs Nixon in a distant nook, Edwin had the attic floor to himself. He ought to have been as safe from intrusion there as in the farthest capital of Europe. His father did not climb the attic stairs once in six months. So that he had regarded himself as secure. Still, he must have forgotten the very existence of his father; he must have been &............