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‘I just want to look at them all first,’ he answered. ‘I’ll talk
afterwards.’
He was collecting himself. He was panic-stricken. He
did not know what to say. It was not only that they were
ill-drawn, or that the colour was put on amateurishly by
someone who had no eye for it; but there was no attempt
at getting the values, and the perspective was grotesque. It
looked like the work of a child of five, but a child would
have had some naivete and might at least have made an at-
tempt to put down what he saw; but here was the work of a
vulgar mind chock full of recollections of vulgar pictures.
Philip remembered that she had talked enthusiastically
about Monet and the Impressionists, but here were only the
worst traditions of the Royal Academy.
‘There,’ she said at last, ‘that’s the lot.’
Philip was no more truthful than anybody else, but he
had a great difficulty in telling a thundering, deliberate lie,
and he blushed furiously when he answered:
‘I think they’re most awfully good.’
A faint colour came into her unhealthy cheeks, and she
smiled a little.
‘You needn’t say so if you don’t think so, you know. I
want the truth.’
‘But I do think so.’
‘Haven’t you got any criticism to offer? There must be
some you don’t like as well as others.’
Philip looked round helplessly. He saw a landscape, the
typical picturesque ‘bit’ of the amateur, an old bridge, a
creeper-clad cottage, and a leafy bank.

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