To his sensitive eye--for, as he said to Lawrence Newt, in explanation of his close observation, it is wonderful how sensitive an exclusive devotion to art will make the eye--to his eye the calmness was still too calm, as the gayety had been too gay.
In the solitude of his studio, as he drew many pictures upon the canvas, and sang, and smoked, and scuffled across the floor to survey his work from a little distance--and studied its progress through his open fist--or as he lay sprawling upon his lounge in a cotton velvet Italian coat, inimitably befogged and bebuttoned--and puffed profusely, following the intervolving smoke with his eye--his meditations were always the same.

He was always thinking of Hope Wayne, and befooling himself with the mask of art, actually hiding himself from himself: and not perceiving that when a man's sole thought by day and night is a certain woman, and an endless speculation about the quality of her feeling for another man, he is simply a lover thinking of his mistress and a rival.
The infatuated painter suddenly became a great favorite in society.

He could not tell why.

Indeed there was no other secret than that he was a very pleasant young gentleman who made himself agreeable to young women, because he wished to know them and to paint them--not, as he wickedly told Lawrence Newt, who winked and did not believe a word of it, because the human being is the noblest subject of art--but only because he wished to show himself by actual experience how much more charming in character, and sprightly in intelligence, and beautiful in person and manner, Hope Wayne was than all other young women.
He proved that important point to his perfect satisfaction.

He punctually attended every meeting of the Round Table, as Lawrence called the meetings at which he and Arthur read and talked with Hope Wayne and Amy Waring, that he might lose no opportunity of pursuing the study.