creations—­frightening, but powerful and symbolic once they had been explained!  That he, haloed by bright hair like an early Italian painting, and absorbed in his genius to the exclusion of all else—­the only sign of course by which real genius could be told—­should still be a “lame duck” agitated her warm heart almost to the exclusion of Paul Post.  And she had begun to take steps to clear her Gallery, in order to fill it with Strumolowski masterpieces.  She had at once encountered trouble.  Paul Post had kicked; Vospovitch had stung.  With all the emphasis of a genius which she did not as yet deny them, they had demanded another six weeks at least of her Gallery.  The American stream, still flowing in, would soon be flowing out.  The American stream was their right, their only hope, their salvation—­since nobody in this “beastly” country cared for Art.  June had yielded to the demonstration.  After all Boris would not mind their having the full benefit of an American stream, which he himself so violently despised.

This evening she had put that to Boris with nobody else present, except Hannah Hobdey, the mediaeval black-and-whitist, and Jimmy Portugal, editor of the Neo-Artist.  She had put it to him with that sudden confidence which continual contact with the neo-artistic world had never been able to dry up in her warm and generous nature.  He had not broken his Christ-like silence, however, for more than two minutes before she began to move her blue eyes from side to side, as a cat moves its tail.  This—­he said—­was characteristic of England, the most selfish country in the world; the country which sucked the blood of other countries; destroyed the brains and hearts of Irishmen, Hindus, Egyptians, Boers, and Burmese, all the best races in the world; bullying, hypocritical England!  This was what he had expected, coming to, such a country, where the climate was all fog, and the people all tradesmen perfectly blind to Art, and sunk in profiteering and the grossest materialism.  Conscious that Hannah Hobdey was murmuring, “Hear, hear!” and Jimmy Portugal sniggering, June grew crimson, and suddenly rapped out: 

“Then why did you ever come?  We didn’t ask you.”

The remark was so singularly at variance with all she had led him to expect from her, that Strumolowski stretched out his hand and took a cigarette.

“England never wants an idealist,” he said.

But in June something primitively English was thoroughly upset; old Jolyon’s sense of justice had risen, as it were, from bed.  “You come and sponge on us,” she said, “and then abuse us.  If you think that’s playing the game, I don’t.”

She now discovered that which others had discovered before her—­the thickness of hide beneath which the sensibility of genius is sometimes veiled.  Strumolowski’s young and ingenuous face became the incarnation of a sneer.

“Sponge, one does not sponge, one takes what is owing—­a tenth part of what is owing.  You will repent to say that, Miss Forsyte.”