Bram has visited several artists’ ateliers, some belonging to painters, others the workplaces of sculptors, but he has never in his life seen anything like Mangan’s studio. The space must have originally consisted of a large room at the rear of the house. A wall has been roughly knocked down to extend it into an adjoining room. This in turn has had its doors and far wall removed so that both spaces now run into the rather rickety conservatory that clings, spiderlike, to the back of the building.

“Light! Light, my young friend,” Mangan explains, waving an expansive arm at the devastation wrought upon the old house. “An artist cannot work without it. Art cannot thrive in the darkness. What is comfort, what is convention, what is property next to the value of the aesthetic? All must be subjugated to art. There can be no half measures.”

This man is incapable of any action which is not extreme, Bram thinks. His opinions, his politics, his personal life, even the way he moves and speaks—all are extreme. Is it any wonder he produces such radical work? But which came first? Does the man shape the nature of what he creates, or does it shape him? If I stay here long enough will I, too, become extreme? Will being in his company draw from me further my own obsessive nature, so that I, too, am consumed by my art? Such an existence can only be a short step away for me. Would I produce my best work this way, or would I merely lose stability further?

Mangan’s chosen medium is stone. Huge chunks of pale limestone hewn from the quarries at Portland sit heavily on the groaning floorboards. Here and there is evidence of shoring up of the level below, with stout props visible through gaps, installed to reinforce the floor and prevent the stone disappearing into the cellars. Two pieces of natural rock are untouched, a third shows marks and gouges and other signs of the early stages of work. Another has been extensively chiseled to reveal the lumpen, rough form of a reclining woman. At the conservatory end of the studio are several smaller sculptures, all at different stages of development, all bearing Mangan’s distinctive style—angular, bold, with planes that catch the light and hollows which harbor secret shadows. While Mangan revels in showing his new protégé his work, Perry labors away preparing stone and sharpening tools in one of the darker corners of the space. He smiles over at Bram reassuringly.

When does he ever get to do his own work? I wonder. Is everyone so in thrall to Mangan that they allow themselves to be … absorbed by him and by his art? I must not let that happen to me. I must guard against it.