the two faces, one brown and pointed, the other round and
pale, appeared in the frame of the open door. The energy born of his
restless irritation was dying within him, returning to its emotional
elements. A moment more and he would have been losing his temper
again--and Anne would be keeping hers, infuriatingly. Yes, he was
positively glad to see them.

"Come in, come in," he called out hospitably.

Followed by Mr. Scogan, Denis climbed the little ladder and stepped over
the threshold. He looked suspiciously from Gombauld to his sitter, and
could learn nothing from the expression of their faces except that they
both seemed pleased to see the visitors. Were they really glad, or were
they cunningly simulating gladness? He wondered.

Mr. Scogan, meanwhile, was looking at the portrait.

"Excellent," he said approvingly, "excellent. Almost too true to
character, if that is possible; yes, positively too true. But I'm
surprised to find you putting in all this psychology business." He
pointed to the face, and with his extended finger followed the slack
curves of the painted figure. "I thought you were one of the fellows who
went in exclusively for balanced masses and impinging planes."

Gombauld laughed. "This is a little infidelity," he said.

"I'm sorry," said Mr. Scogan. "I for one, without ever having had
the slightest appreciation of painting, have always taken particular
pleasure in Cubismus. I like to see pictures from which nature has been
completely banished, pictures which are exclusively the product of the
human mind. They give me the same pleasure as I derive from a good piece
of reasoning or a mathematical problem or an achievement of engineering.
Nature, or anything that reminds me of nature, disturbs me; it is
too large, too complicated, above all too utterly pointless and
incomprehensible. I am at home with the works of man; if I choose to
set my mind to it, I can understand anything that any man has made or
thought. That is why I always travel by Tube, never by bus if I can
possibly help it. For, travelling by bus, one can't avoid seeing, even
in London, a few stray works of God--the sky, for example, an occasional
tree, the flowers in the window-boxes. But travel by Tube and you see
nothing but the works of man--iron riveted into geometrical forms,
straight lines of concrete, patterned expanses of tiles. All is human
and the product of friendly and comprehensible minds. All philosophies
and all religio