"May I come in?" she asked.

"Certainly."

She skipped up the remaining two rungs and was over the threshold
in an instant. "A letter came for you by the second post," she
said. "I thought it might be important, so I brought it out to
you." Her eyes, her childish face were luminously candid as she
handed him the letter. There had never been a flimsier pretext.

Gombauld looked at the envelope and put it in his pocket
unopened. "Luckily," he said, "it isn't at all important.
Thanks very much all the same."

There was a silence; Mary felt a little uncomfortable. "May I
have a look at what you've been painting?" she had the courage to
say at last.

Gombauld had only half smoked his cigarette; in any case he
wouldn't begin work again till he had finished. He would give
her the five minutes that separated him from the bitter end.
"This is the best place to see it from," he said.

Mary looked at the picture for some time without saying anything.
Indeed, she didn't know what to say; she was taken aback, she was
at a loss. She had expected a cubist masterpiece, and here was a
picture of a man and a horse, not only recognisable as such, but
even aggressively in drawing. Trompe-l'oeil--there was no other
word to describe the delineation of that foreshortened figure
under the trampling feet of the horse. What was she to think,