"They were all masterpieces when I first finished them."
"Yes; but seriously, which do you consider your best? I want to know."
Ted hesitated, and then turned to a stack of larger canvases.
"I wonder," she murmured, "if I shall think it your best."
"Probably not."
"Why not?"
Ted did not answer: he hardly liked to say, "Because hitherto you have persistently admired my worst."
"This," he said, laughing, as he lifted a large canvas on to the easel, "is the only masterpiece that has withstood the test of time."
"He means," struck in his sister, "that he finished it a week ago, and that in another week he'll want to stick a knife into it."
With all its faults the picture had a poetic audacity that defied the criticism it provoked. If you looked long enough, you saw that a youth and a maiden were lying in a trance that was half sleep, half death; while their souls, diaphanous forms with indefinite legs, hovered above them in mid-air, each leaning towards the other's body. The souls described two curves that crossed like the intersecting of rainbows; and where they met, their wings mingled in a confused iridescence. Eros, in a flame-coloured tunic, looked on with an air of studied indifference that might or might not have been intended by the painter.