She coloured slightly, as though in antagonism.

'That means that you don't admire it at all?'

'Well, it doesn't say anything to me,' said Fenwick, after a pause.

'What do you dislike?'

'Why doesn't he paint flesh?' he said, abruptly—'not coloured wax.'

'Of course there is a decorative convention in his painting'—her tone was a little stiff—'but so there is in all painting.'

Fenwick shrugged his shoulders.

'Go and look at Rubens—or Velasquez.'

[Illustration: Eugénie]

'Why not at Leonardo—and Raphael?'