CHAPTER VII.
THE MARTYR Clifford Marsh left Pompeii on the same day as his two chance acquaintances; he returned to his quarters on the Mergellina, much perturbed in mind, beset with many doubts, with divers temptations.
"Shall I the spigot wield ?" Must the ambitions of his glowing youth come to naught, and he descend to rank among the Philistines?
For, to give him credit for a certain amount of good sense, he never gravely contemplated facing the world in the sole strength of his genius.

He knew one or two who had done so before his mind's eye was a certain little garret in Chelsea, where an acquaintance of his, a man of real and various powers, was year after year taxing his brain and heart in a bitter struggle with penury; and these glimpses of Bohemia were far from inspiring Clifford with zeal for naturalization.

Elated with wine and companionship, he liked to pose as one who was sacrificing "prospects" to artistic conscientiousness; but, even though he had "fallen back" on landscape, he was very widely awake to the fact that his impressionist studies would not supply him with bread, to say nothing of butter--and Clifford must needs have both.
That step-father of his was a well-to-do manufacturer of shoddy in Leeds, one Hibbert, a good-natured man on the whole, but of limited horizon.

He had married a widow above his own social standing, and for a long time was content to supply her idolized son with the means of pursuing artistic studies in London and abroad.

But Mr.Hibbert had a strong opinion that this money should by now have begun to make some show of productiveness.