Rene Magritte Donna painting

Rene Magritte Donna paintingArthur Hughes The King's Orchard paintingArthur Hughes Phyllis painting
Indulge me now, as a useful introduction to the opus proper, the story of its origin and my coming by it. As you may know, like most of our authors these days I support myself by preaching what I practice. One grows used, in fiction-writing seminaries, to three chief categories of students: elder ladies and climacteric gentlemen who an avocation which too might supplement their pensions; well-groomed and intelligent young literature-majors of various sexes who have a flair; and those intensely marginal souls -- underdisciplined, oversensitive, disordered in both appearance and reality -- whose huge craving for the state of artist-hood may drive them so far in rare instances as actually to work at making pieces of art. It was one of this third sort, I assumed, who came into my office on a gusty fall evening several terms ago with a box of typescript under his arm and a gleam in his face.
I'd not seen him before -- but then, these bohemians appear and vanish like spooks, change their aspect at the merest whim (quite as does the creature calledHarold Bray hereinafter), and have often the most tenuous connection with their Departments