Attending the life class was my idea -- or rather, Askington's idea, but I was ripe for it, and the other two wouldn't have gone if I hadn't talked them into it. I wanted to paint again. I hadn't done a serious picture in almost a year. It wasn't just the pressure of work, although that was the excuse I often used, even to myself. It was the kind of work I was doing, the quality of the ambition it awoke in me, that kept me from painting. I kept saying, ``If I could just build up a reputation for myself, make some real money, get to be well known as an illustrator -- like Peter Askington, for instance -- then I could take some time off and paint.'' Askington was a kind of goal I set myself; I had admired him long before I talked to him. It looked to me as though he had everything an artist could want, joy in his work, standing in the profession, a large and steady income. The night we first met, at one of Mrs. Monmouth's giant parties, he was wearing a brown cashmere jacket with silver buttons and a soft pink Viyella shirt; instead of a necktie he wore a leather bolo drawn through a golden ring in which was set a lump of pale pure jade. This set his tone: richness of texture and color, and another kind of richness as well, for his clothing and decorations would have paid the Brush-off's rent for a year. He was fifteen years older than I -- forty four -- but full of spring and sparkle. He didn't look like what I thought of as an old man, and his lively and erudite speech made him seem even younger. He was one of the most prominent magazine illustrators in America; you saw one of his paintings on the cover of one or another of the slick national magazines every month. Life had included him in its ``Modern American Artists'' series and had photographed him at his studio in the East Sixties; the corner of it you could see in the photograph looked as though it ought to have Velasquez in it painting the royalty of Spain.