We stood and gazed. It was a tremendous thing; only half a dozen
studies with feeling and knowledge in them, but there in that remote
fastness thrice barred against the arts a tremendous thing, a
banquet for our famished eyes. What they would have said to us in
London is a different matter, and how good they really were I do not
find the courage to pronounce, but they had merit enough to prick
our sense of beauty delightfully where we found them--oh, they were
good!

'Heaven send it isn't a Tommy,' said Dora, with a falling
countenance. 'There is something absolutely inaccessible about a
Tommy.'

'How could it be?' I asked.

'Oh, there are some inspired ones. But it isn't--that's French
technique. It's an Englishman or an American who has worked in
Paris. What in the name of fortune is he doing here?'

'Oh,' I said, 'we have had them, you know. Val Prinsep came out at
the time of the Prince of Wales's visit.'

'Do you remember that?'

'It's a matter of history,' I said, evasively, 'and Edwin Weeks
travelled through India not so many years ago. I saw his studio in
Paris afterward. Between his own canvases and Ahmedabad balconies
and Delhi embroideries and Burmese Buddhas and other things he
seemed to have carried off the whole place.'