Turning to his wife, who was looking at the speaker with an angry expression on her thin face, he said:

“You see, dear?”

“I do not ,” she answered in her staccato voice, that still had a little foreign accent; “your style has originality.”

The critic looked at her, smiled deferentially, and said no more. Like everyone else, he knew their history.

The words bore good fruit with young Jolyon; they were contrary to all that he believed in, to all that he theoretically held good in his art, but some strange, deep instinct moved him against his will to turn them to profit.