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"Well, you two," cried Amy. "Jack's the perfect philistine, of course." She came to the fire, resting her hand upon the mantelpiece, and holding a cigarette forward in her lips for Monty to light. She spoke thereafter with the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and the smoke drifting up into her eyes. "You can explain a thing to him in words of one syllable for hours on end, and at the end he just says, 'Well, I know what I like!' Doesn't turn a hair. Not a swerve. Isn't it marvellous?"

"Why pretend?" suavely demanded Monty. "A great deal of talk about the arts is humbug. It's created by the apparent necessity for saying something."

"I agree with you," snorted Jack, who was still ruffled by the recent exploration of his inexhaustible troubles, and who therefore was in danger of being rather less than polite.

"I felt sure you would, my dear Penton," lazily responded Monty. "What we need is standardised criticism. Unfortunately, people are so perverse. They insist on having their own views."