"You are indeed. You're quite off the hinge. What's the meaning of
this new fad?" And he tossed me, with visible irreverence, a drawing
in which I happened to have depicted both my majestic models. I
asked if he didn't think it good, and he replied that it struck him
as execrable, given the sort of thing I had always represented myself
to him as wishing to arrive at; but I let that pass, I was so anxious
to see exactly what he meant. The two figures in the picture looked
colossal, but I supposed this was NOT what he meant, inasmuch as, for
aught he knew to the contrary, I might have been trying for that. I
maintained that I was working exactly in the same way as when he last
had done me the honour to commend me. "Well, there's a big hole
somewhere," he answered; "wait a bit and I'll discover it." I
depended upon him to do so: where else was the fresh eye? But he
produced at last nothing more luminous than "I don't know--I don't
like your types." This was lame, for a critic who had never
consented to discuss with me anything but the question of execution,
the direction of strokes and the mystery of values.

"In the drawings you've been looking at I think my types are very
handsome."

"Oh, they won't do!"

"I've had a couple of new models."

"I see you have. THEY won't do."

"Are you very sure of that?"

"Absolutely--they're stupid."