“Eh? Do you like them?” said he, surprised. “Why he’s the man who started the æsthetic craze; all the women took to starving themselves, and to going about like bundles of limp rags, to look like the gaunt creatures in his pictures.”
“That was silly,” said Nouna promptly. “The women in the pictures mean something, and they don’t care how they look; a woman who just dressed herself up like them would mean nothing, and would care only for how she looked.”
George thought this rather a smart criticism, and forgave her peculiar taste on the strength of it; still, he believed himself to be quite on the safe side when he said, taking her arm to point out a picture on the opposite wall by another artist:
“You won’t want me to admire that smudge, I hope, Nouna?”
She remained silent, considering it, and then said gravely:—
“It isn’t a smudge, it’s a lady.”
“Well, do you like it?”
“I like her better than the babies, and ladies, and cows, and mountains in the Royal Academy.”
“But it takes half an hour to find out what it is.”
“That’s better than making you wish it wasn’t there.”