“All right,” he replied.
Morrison reached the top of the stairs, and he stood looking at her.
“How are you?”
“I’m very well.”
She was horrified at the change in him. He looked so tragic and drawn.
“Clowes can’t stop long,” she said. “But I’ll stop, if I may. I should like to.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t got anything to show you. I haven’t been working lately.”
“It seems to be a pretty general complaint,” said Clowes. “Everybody is so upset by the French pictures. I should like to shake that Thompson until his teeth rattled. He is so pleased with himself.”
“He’s an awful man,” muttered Mendel. “He seems to think he told Cézanne and Van Gogh how to do it. There seems to be a whole army of men ready to take the credit of a thing when someone else has done it. I suppose they are all talking like mad.”
“What is so astonishing is that these things are actually selling, and people who never sold a picture in their lives dab a few straight lines on a picture and off it goes.”