"There are good things there," said Oswyn tersely, "and a great many abominations as well. I was over in Paris last week."
Rainham glanced at him over his cup with a certain surprise.
"I didn't know you ever went there now," he remarked.
"No, I never go if I can help it. I hate Paris; it is triste as a well, and full of ghosts. Ghosts! It's a city of the dead. But I had a picture there this time, and I went to look at it."
"In the new Salon?"
"In the new Salon. It was a little gray, dusky thing, three foot by two, and their flaming miles of canvas murdered it. I am not a scene-painter," he went on a little savagely. "I don't paint with a broom, and I have no ambition to do the sun, or an eruption of Vesuvius. So I doubt if I shall exhibit there again until the vogue alters. Oh, they are clever enough, those fellows! even the trickiest of them can draw, which is the last thing they learn here, and one or two are men of genius. But I should dearly like to set them down, en plein air too, if they insist upon it, with the palette of Velasquez. I went out and wandered in the Morgue afterwards, and I confess its scheme of colour rested my eyes."
"Do I know your picture?" asked Rainham to change the subject, finding him a little grim. "Is it the thing you were doing here?"
Oswyn's head rested on one thin, colour-stained hand which shaded his eyes.
"No," he said with a suggestion of constraint, "it was an old sketch which I had worked up—not the thing you knew. I shall not finish that——"
"Not finish it!" cried Rainham. "But of course you must! why, it was superb; it promised a masterpiece!"