face, sir. Is she here?"

The frankness of his interest almost disarmed Soames.

"She'll be in after tea," he said. "Shall we go round the pictures?"

And Soames began that round which never tired him. He had not
anticipated much intelligence from one who had mistaken a copy for an
original, but as they passed from section to section, period to period,
he was startled by the young man's frank and relevant remarks. Natively
shrewd himself, and even sensuous beneath his mask, Soames had not spent
thirty-eight years over his one hobby without knowing something more
about pictures than their market values. He was, as it were, the missing
link between the artist and the commercial public. Art for art's sake
and all that, of course, was cant. But aesthetics and good taste were
necessary. The appreciation of enough persons of good taste was what
gave a work of art its permanent market value, or in other words made
it "a work of art." There was no real cleavage. And he was sufficiently
accustomed to sheep-like and unseeing visitors, to be intrigued by one
who did not hesitate to say of Mauve: "Good old haystacks!" or of James
Maris: "Didn't he just paint and paper 'em! Mathew was the real swell,
sir; you could dig into his surfaces!" It was after the young man had
whistled before a Whistler, with the words, "D'you think he ever really
saw a naked woman, sir?" that Soames remarked:

"What are you, Mr. Mont, if I may ask?"

"I, sir? I was going to be a painter, but the War knocked that. Then in
the trenches, you know, I used to dream of the Stock Exchange, snug and
warm and just noisy enough. But the Peace knocked that, shares seem off,
don't they? I've only been demobbed about a year. What do you recommend,
sir?"

"Have you got money?"

"Well," answered the young man, "I've got a father; I kept him alive
during the War, so he's bound to keep me alive now. Though, of course,
there's the question whether he ought to be allowed to hang on to his
property. What do you think about that, sir?"

Soames, pale and defensive, smiled.

"The old man has fits when I tell him he may have to work yet. He's got
land, you know; it's a fatal disease."

"This is my real Goya," said Soames dryly.

"By George! He was a swell. I saw a Goya in Munich once that bowled me
middle stump. A most evil-looking old woman in the most gorgeous lace.
He made no compromise with the public taste. That old boy was 'some'
explosive; he must have smashe