'There, it is better now,' he said, surveying the picture, his head on
one side.

'I should think it was,' she answered enthusiastically. 'I shall be
able to get on now. I could not get the drawing of that face right.
And the sky--what a difference! I like it as well as the original.
It's quite as good.'

Ralph laughed, and they walked through the galleries. The question, of
course, arose, which was the greater, the Turner or the Claude?

Mildred thought that she liked the Claude.

'One is romance, the other is common sense.'

'If the Turner is romance, I wonder I don't prefer it to the Claude. I
love romance.'

'School-girl romance, very likely.' Mildred didn't answer and, without
noticing her, Ralph continued, 'I like Turner best in the grey and
English manner: that picture, for instance, on the other side of the
doorway. How much simpler, how much more original, how much more
beautiful. That grey and yellow sky, the delicacy of the purple in the
clouds. But even in classical landscape Turner did better than Claude
--Turner created--all that architecture is dreamed; Claude copied
his.'

At the end of each little sentence he stared at Mildred, half ashamed
at having expressed himself so badly, half surprised at having