“You do like them, don’t you?” she said anxiously, after a bit.
“I just want to look at them all first,” he answered. “I’ll talk afterwards.”
He was collecting himself. He was panic-stricken. He did not know what to say. It was not only that they were ill-drawn, or that the colour was put on amateurishly by someone who had no eye for it; but there was no attempt at getting the values, and the perspective was grotesque. It looked like the work of a child of five, but a child would have had some naivete and might at least have made an attempt to put down what he saw; but here was the work of a vulgar mind chock full of recollections of vulgar pictures. Philip remembered that she had talked enthusiastically about Monet and the Impressionists, but here were only the worst traditions of the Royal Academy.
“There,” she said at last, “that’s the lot.”
Philip was no more truthful than anybody else, but he had a great difficulty in telling a thundering, deliberate lie, and he blushed furiously when he answered:
“I think they’re most awfully good.”
A faint colour came into her unhealthy cheeks, and she smiled a little.
“You needn’t say so if you don’t think so, you know. I want the truth.”
“But I do think so.”
“Haven’t you got any criticism to offer? There must be some you don’t like as well as others.”