“I must confess I find it very difficult to get on with him.”
“He’s a wonderful painter.”
“No doubt—in his way.”
“I think it a great mistake for any creative artist to be wonderful in someone else’s way,” said Miss Van Tuyn.
“I only meant that his way is sometimes rather startling. And then his subjects! Drugged women! Dram drinking men! And now it seems even blackmailers.”
“A blackmailer might have a wonderful face.”
“Possibly. But it would be likely to have a disgusting expression.”
“It might. On the other hand, I could imagine a blackmailer looking like Chaliapine as Mephistopheles.”
“I don’t like distressing art,” said Braybrooke, rather firmly. “And I think there is too much of it nowadays.”
“Anything is better than the merely nice. And you have far too much of that in England. Men like Dick Garstin are a violent protest against that, and sometimes they go to extremes. He has caught the secret of evil, and when he has done with it he may quite possibly catch the secret of good.”