On an easel stood the picture which Logan had described to Tysoe, a London street scene with a group of people gazing into a shop window. It was a clever piece of work, very adroit in the handling of the paint and pleasing in colour, but Mendel had an odd uncomfortable feeling of having seen it before, and yet he knew that the technique was novel. Yet it was precisely the technique that seemed familiar. Certain liberties had been taken with the perspective which, though they were new to him, did not surprise him. Logan came in dressed and said that Oliver would not be a minute. She appeared in a dressing-gown. "Well?" she said; "none the worse for last night?" "No, thanks," said Mendel. "Why should I be? I enjoyed it." "Did Logan tell you we were going to Paris?" "No. He said nothing about it." "I'm dying to go to Paris. He says they understand the kind of thing we had last night in Paris." "You're not going for good, are you?" asked Mendel. "No. Just a trip. I want you to come too. We'll see some pictures and have a good time. I can't speak a word of French, but they say English is good enough anywhere." "Yes, I'd like to go," said Mendel. "I want a change, before I settle down to working for the exhibition. Is that picture going to be in it?" "Yes. Do you like it?" "I like it. It seems to me new. Stronger than most things. All these people going in for thin, flat colour and greens and mauves make me long for something solid." "I'm going to show that and a portrait of Oliver." "I want my breakfast," said she. "Oh! shut up. We're talking. . . . I've just begun the portrait. No psychological nonsense about it. It's just the head of a woman in paint. I don't want any damn fool writing about my picture: she is wiser than the chair on which she sits and the secrets of the antimacassar are hers. A picture's a picture and a book's a book." "I do want my breakfast," sang Oliver. Logan went livid with fury. "Be silent, woman," he said. "I shan't, so there. I want my breakfast." "Why the hell don't you get the breakfast then?" "Because you said you would." Logan began to prepare the breakfast--rashers of bacon and eggs. "You don't mind eating pork?" he asked Mendel. "No. I like it, but I never get it at home." "Fancy Jews being still as strict as that!" said Oliver. "Just like they were in Shakespeare's time." "Just as they were in the time of Moses and Aaron," said Mendel. "They don't alter except that they haven't got a country to fight for." "Thank God!" said Logan, "or there'd be a bloody mess every other week. Fancy a Jewish Empire, with you sent out, like David, to hit the Czar of Russia or Chaliapine in the eye with a stone from a sling. Think of your sister-in-law luring the Kaiser into a tent and knocking a nail through his head. I wish she could, upon my soul I do!"