"I don't like it," she asserted, with childish frankness.
"Eh? You don't like it? Why not, girl?"
"Well," she replied, her eyes narrowing critically, "that cow's horn isn't on straight—the red cow's left horn. And it's the same size, all the way up."
He laid down his palette and brush and gazed at his picture for a long time. The scowl came on his face again. Usually his face was stolid and expressionless, but Alora had begun to observe that whenever anything irritated or disturbed him he scowled, and the measure of the scowl indicated to what extent he was annoyed. When he scowled at his own unfinished picture Lory decided he was honest enough to agree with her criticism of it.
Finally the artist took a claspknife from his pocket, opened the blade and deliberately slashed the picture from top to bottom, this way and that, until it was a mere mass of shreds. Then he kicked the stretcher into a corner and brought out another picture, which he placed on the easel.
"Well, how about that?" he asked, looking hard at it himself.
Alora was somewhat frightened at having caused the destruction of the cow picture. So she hesitated before replying: "I—I'd rather not say."
"How funny!" he said musingly, "but until now I never realized how stiff and unreal the daub is. Shall I finish it, Alora?"
"I think so, sir," she answered.
Again the knife slashed through the canvas and the remains joined the scrap-heap in the corner.