“What do you think of that one?” he asked without turning his head.
She was taken aback and was prepared to be chilly and noncommittal. She looked at his face and the nearer view was a pleasing one. He was very fair, very good-looking and had the bluest eyes she had ever seen in a man. He was also unshaven and his collar was not clean, but he was well dressed enough and his tone was wholly Oxford—and Balliol at that.
“I think it is rather weird,” she said.
“So do I,” he nodded vigorously. “I think it is—‘weird’ is the word. As a work of art how does it strike you?”
She hesitated. She had a full range of studio jargon which she had acquired in the course of her after-education and could speak glibly on atmosphere, tone and light. She knew that it was possible to refer to a still-life study of a bunch of bananas as being “full of movement” without being guilty of an absurdity. In fact, she knew enough about art to have occupied a position on any average newspaper as a critic.
“As a work of art,” she said, “it is original and a little eccentric.”
“Frankly?” he demanded fiercely.
All the time he spoke he was glaring at the picture and had not turned his head toward her.
“Frankly,” she replied, “I think these are monstrosities.”
He nodded again.
“I agree with you,” he said, “and I know better than anybody else how monstrous they are—I painted ’em!”
Moya gasped.
“I am awfully sorry,” she began.
“I am sorry, too—that I painted them,” he replied. “I am not sorry that I exhibited them, because all my friends told me that they were wonderful and naturally I get some satisfaction from proving that my friends are mentally deficient.”
He turned round and looked at her and was in turn surprised.
“Hello,” he said, staring at her with his blue eyes wide open, “I thought you were much older.”
She laughed.
“The fact is I didn’t look at you,” he confessed; “how can anybody look at anything with these beastly things staring one in the face—Hi! Emma!”
Fortunately the programme girl was looking his way and realised that he was speaking to her.
“Your name is Emma, I suppose.”
“No, sir,” said the girl impressively, “my name is Evangeline.”
He turned to the girl.
“Here is an Evangeline whom I thought was an Emma; and here are my Emmas that I thought were Evangelines,” he said despairingly. “What made you come to this exhibition?”
“I saw a criticism of the pictures in yesterday’s papers.”
“In the Megaphone,” he said accusingly.
“Yes—it was a very flattering criticism, I thought,” said the girl.
He nodded.
“I wrote it myself,” he said without shame.
He turned to the programme girl.
“Tell your master to shut up the gallery, have the pictures packed away and sent home.”
“But,” said Moya in alarm, “I hope my stupid views won’t influence you.”
“It isn’t your stupid view,” he said, “it is my original stupid view. You see, I can’t paint really. I know not the slightest thing about art, I have never had an artistic education or served under any master. I am a genius. These works are works of a genius. The frames cost a lot of money and the amount of paint I have used is prodigious. There is everything there,” he waved his hand to the covered walls, “except the know-how.”
She murmured a conventional expression of sympathy, but he did not invite sympathy, he invited condemnation and seemed to find a comfort in his own misfortune and was obviously all the happier, that he had reached a decision on his own merits.
They walked out of the gallery together and Moya wondered at herself. That she had in so brief a space of time entered into the aspirations and disappointments of a perfect stranger so that she felt something of his chagrin was truly amazing.
“I know you,” he said, breaking off in the midst of a sardonic dissertation on art, “you are Lady Moya Melton or Pelton.”
“Felton,” she suggested, amused.
“Oh, yes, Felton,” he nodded. “I saw your portrait in the academy, a very bad portrait too.”
“People thought it was rather good,” she demurred.
“Idealised, but Lord, what do I know about art? This charabanc de luxe is yours, I presume,” he pointed to the big limousine.
“It does happen to be mine,” she said; “my father gave it to me on my twenty-first birthday.”
He inspected it critically.
“I wonder if I know as much about motorcars as I know about painting,” he said. “I used to think I knew something about both, but here, at any rate, is something real, it is a very nice car.”
He opened the door for her and she offered her hand.
“I am so sorry about the pictures,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” he replied cheerfully.
She thought for a moment.
“Can I drop you anywhere?”
He fingered his unshaven chin.
“If you know of a nice deep pond where a man may drown himself without interference I should be obliged,” he said gravely, then, seeing the look of alarm in her eyes he laughed. “You probably don’t know my name,” he said.
As a matter of fact she did not and had been trying throughout the interview to take a surreptitious look at the catalogue. She knew it was something like Brixel.
“Fonso Blaxton—” he said shortly. “Fonso stands for Alphonso, a perfectly rotten name, isn’t it? It would be quite all right for an artist. If there’s any need to send flowers, my address is Oxford Chambers.”
He shook hands abruptly, handed her into the car and closed the door. He waited only the briefest spell and had lifted his hat and vanished before the car had started.
Moya drove back with so much to occupy her thoughts that she forgot to dream. So preoccupied was she, that she passed Sir Ralph Sapson and his chic companion turning into the park before she was aware that he was bowing to her or had time
