“I won’t touch what you’ve done, Miss West,” he said, smilingly; “but just take a pinch of wax—­that way!—­and accent that relaxed flank muscle!...  Don’t be afraid; watch the shape of the shadows....  That’s it!  Do you see?  Never be afraid of dealing vigorously with your subject.  Every modification of the first vigorous touch is bound to weaken and sometimes to emasculate....  I don’t mean for you to parade crudity and bunches of exaggerated muscle as an ultimate expression of vigour.  Only the devotee of the obvious is satisfied with that sort of result; and our exhibitions reek with them.  But there is no reason why the satin skin and smooth contour of a naked child shouldn’t express virility and vigour—­no reason why the flawless delicacy of Venus herself should not, if necessary, express violence unexaggerated and without either distortion or lack of finish.”

He glanced across at the dozing cat: 

“Under that silky black fur there are bones and fibres and muscles.  Don’t exaggerate them and call your task finished; merely remember always that they’re there framing and padding the velvet skin.  More is done by skilful inference than by parading every abstract fact you know and translating the sum-accumulative of your knowledge into the over-accented concrete.  Reticence is a kind of vigour.  It can even approach violence.  The mentally garrulous kill their own inspiration.  Inadequacy loves to lump things and gamble with chance for effective results.”

He rose, walked over and examined Gladys, touched her contemplatively with the button of his mahl-stick, and listened absently to her responsive purr.  Then, palette still in hand, he sat down opposite Valerie, gazing at her in that detached manner which some mistook for indifference: 

“There are, I think, two reasons for failure in art,” he said, “excess of creative emotion, excess of psychological hair-splitting.  The one produces the normal and lovable failures which, decorate our art exhibitions; the other results in those curious products which amuse the public to good-humoured contempt—­I mean those pictures full of violent colour laid on in streaks, in great sweeps, in patches, in dots.  The painter has turned half theorist, half scientist; the theories of the juxtaposition of colour, and the science of complementary colours, engrosses his attention.  He is no longer an artist; he is a chemist and physiologist and an artisan.

“Every now and then there is a revolt from the accepted order of things.  New groups form, sometimes damning what they call the artificial lighting of the studio, sometimes exclaiming against the carnival of harmonious or crude colour generally known as ‘plein air.’  Impressionists scorn the classic, and vice versa.  But, Miss West, as a matter of fact, all schools are as good as all religions.