Her face changed and lit up.

‘Well, what did you see?’

‘The two Academy pictures—­several portraits—­and a lot of studies.’

‘Isn’t it fine—­the “Polyxena"?’

Fenwick twisted his mouth in a trick he had.

‘Yes,’ he said, perfunctorily.

She coloured slightly, as though in antagonism.

‘That means that you don’t admire it at all?’

‘Well, it doesn’t say anything to me,’ said Fenwick, after a pause.

‘What do you dislike?’

‘Why doesn’t he paint flesh?’ he said, abruptly—­’not coloured wax.’

’Of course there is a decorative convention in his painting’—­her tone was a little stiff—­’but so there is in all painting.’

Fenwick shrugged his shoulders.

‘Go and look at Rubens—­or Velasquez.’

[Illustration:  Eugenie]

‘Why not at Leonardo—­and Raphael?’

’Because they are not moderns—­and we can’t get back into their skins.  Rubens and Velasquez are moderns,’ he protested, stoutly.

‘What is a “modern"?’ she asked, laughing.

It was on the tip of his tongue to say, ’You are—­and it is only fashion—­or something else—­that makes you like this archaistic stuff!’ But he restrained himself, and they fell into a skirmish, in which, as usual, he came off badly.  As soon as he perceived it, he became rather heated and noisy, trying to talk her down.  Whereupon she sprang up, came down from her pedestal to look at the picture, called mademoiselle to see—­praised—­laughed—­and all was calm again.  Only Fenwick was left once more reflecting that she was Welby’s champion through thick and thin.  And this ruffled him.

‘Did Mr. Welby study mostly in Italy?’ he asked her presently, as he fetched a hand-glass, in which to examine his morning’s work.

‘Mostly—­but also in Vienna.’

And, to keep the ball rolling, she described a travel-year—­apparently before her marriage—­which she, Lord Findon, a girl friend of hers, and Welby had spent abroad together—­mainly in Rome, Munich, and Vienna—­for the purpose, it seemed, of Welby’s studies.  The experiences she described roused a kind of secret exasperation in Fenwick.  And what was really resentment against the meagreness of his own lot showed itself, as usual, in jealousy.  He said something contemptuous of this foreign training for an artist—­so much concerned with galleries and Old Masters.  Much better that he should use his eyes upon his own country and its types; that had been enough for all the best men.

Madame de Pastourelles politely disagreed with him; then, to change the subject, she talked of some of the humours and incidents of their stay in Vienna—­the types of Viennese society—­the Emperor, the beautiful mad Empress, the Archdukes, the priests—­and also of some hurried visits to Hungarian country houses in winter, of the cosmopolitan luxury and refinement to be found there, ringed by forests and barbarism.