didn’t know what to think. It was very difficult, very difficult.
"There’s rather a lot of chiaroscuro, isn’t there?" she ventured at last, and inwardly congratulated herself on having found a critical formula so gentle and at the same time so penetrating.
"There is," Gombauld agreed.
Mary was pleased; he accepted her criticism; it was a serious discussion. She put her head on one side and screwed up her eyes. "I think it’s awfully fine," she said. "But of course it’s a little too . . . too . . . trompe-l’œil for my taste.” She looked at Gombauld, who made no response, but continued to smoke, gazing meditatively all the time at his picture. Mary went on gaspingly. "When I was in Paris this spring I saw a lot of Tschuplitski. I admire his work so tremendously. Of course, it’s frightfully abstract now—frightfully abstract and frightfully intellectual. He just throws a few oblongs on to his canvas—quite flat, you know, and painted in pure primary colours. But his design is wonderful. He’s getting more and more abstract every day. He’d quite given up the third dimension when I was there and
