"

"Would you like me to come with you? I know the Luxembourg rather well. I
could show you one or two good things."

He understood that, unable to bring herself to apologise directly, she
made this offer as amends.

"It's awfully kind of you. I should like it very much."

"You needn't say yes if you'd rather go alone," she said suspiciously.

"I wouldn't."

They walked towards the gallery. Caillebotte's collection had lately been
placed on view, and the student for the first time had the opportunity to
examine at his ease the works of the impressionists. Till then it had been
possible to see them only at Durand-Ruel's shop in the Rue Lafitte (and
the dealer, unlike his fellows in England, who adopt towards the painter
an attitude of superiority, was always pleased to show the shabbiest
student whatever he wanted to see), or at his private house, to which it
was not difficult to get a card of admission on Tuesdays, and where you
might see pictures of world-wide reputation. Miss Price led Philip
straight up to Manet's Olympia. He looked at it in astonished silence.

"Do you like it?" asked Miss Price.

"I don't know," he answered helplessly.

"You can take it from me that it's the best thing in the gallery except
perhaps Whistler's portrait of his mother."

She gave him a certain time to contemplate the masterpiece and then took
him to a picture representing a railway-station.

"Look, here's a Monet," she said. "It's the Gare St. Lazare."

"But the railway lines aren't parallel," said Philip.

"What does that matter?" she asked, with a haughty air.

Philip felt ashamed of himself. Fanny Price had picked up the glib chatter
of the studios and had no difficulty in impressing Philip with the extent
of her knowledge. She proceeded to explain the pictures to him,
superciliously but not without insight, and showed him what the painters
had attempted and what he must look for. She talked with much
gesticulation of the thumb, and Philip, to whom all she said was new,
listened with profound but bewildered interest. Till now he had worshipped
Watts and Burne-Jones. The pretty colour of the first, the affected
drawing of the second, had entirely satisfied his aesthetic sensibilities.
Their vague idealism, the suspicion of a philosophical idea which underlay
the titles they gave their pictures, accorded very well with the functions
of art as from his diligent perusal of Ruskin he understood it; but here
was something