"I am glad to hear it, Mr. Blanchet."
"Glad to hear that I am so wretchedly poor, Miss Grey?" he said with a smile, and bending his eyes on her. "Glad to hear that your friend's brother is such a failure?"
"I would rather a thousand times hear that you were poor than that you were heartless. I don't call it a failure to be poor. I should call it a failure to be selfish and mean."
She spoke in a low tone, but very earnestly and eagerly, and she suddenly thought she was speaking too eagerly, and stopped.
"Well," he said, after a moment's pause, "here is the picture. We shall get to it presently, when these people move away."
They had entered, through a curtained door, a small room which was nearly filled with people standing before a picture, and admiringly criticising it. Minola, with all her real or fancied delight in noting the jealousies and weaknesses of men and women, could hear no words of detraction or even dispraise.
"Is the painter here?" she asked of her companion in a whisper.
"No; I haven't seen him. Perhaps he'll come in later on."
"Would you think it cheap cynicism if I were to ask why they all praise the picture—why they don't find any fault with it?"
"Oh, because they are all of the school, and they must support their creed. Our art is a creed to us. I don't admit that I am of Delavar's school any more; in fact, I look upon him as a heretic. He is going in for mere popularity; success has spoilt him. But to most of these people here he is still a divinity. They haven't found him out yet."