Page 362 - of-human-bondage-

‘Oh, you think it’s only my temper. Ask Clutton, ask Law-
son, ask Chalice. Never, never, never. You haven’t got it in
you.’
Philip shrugged his shoulders and walked out. She shout-
ed after him.
‘Never, never, never.’
Moret was in those days an old-fashioned town of one
street at the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau, and the Ecu
d’Or was a hotel which still had about it the decrepit air of
the Ancien Regime. It faced the winding river, the Loing;
and Miss Chalice had a room with a little terrace over-
looking it, with a charming view of the old bridge and its
fortified gateway. They sat here in the evenings after dinner,
drinking coffee, smoking, and discussing art. There ran into
the river, a little way off, a narrow canal bordered by pop-
lars, and along the banks of this after their day’s work they
often wandered. They spent all day painting. Like most of
their generation they were obsessed by the fear of the pictur-
esque, and they turned their backs on the obvious beauty of
the town to seek subjects which were devoid of a prettiness
they despised. Sisley and Monet had painted the canal with
its poplars, and they felt a desire to try their hands at what
was so typical of France; but they were frightened of its for-
mal beauty, and set themselves deliberately to avoid it. Miss
Chalice, who had a clever dexterity which impressed Law-
son notwithstanding his contempt for feminine art, started
a picture in which she tried to circumvent the common-
place by leaving out the tops of the trees; and Lawson had
the brilliant idea of putting in his foreground a large blue

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