The best of these paintings (and some of them were good—after all, I should know) I hung around the house in places where my friends could hardly fail to notice them. Everything worked perfectly; admiring queries were followed by astonished cries of “You don’t say!” when I modestly disclaimed responsibility. There was some scepticism, but I soon demolished that by letting a few privileged friends see Dorcas at work. I chose the viewers for their ignorance of art, and the picture was an abstraction in red, gold, and black which no one dared to criticize. By this time, Dorcas could fake it quite well, like a movie actor pretending to play a musical instrument.

Just to spread the news around, I gave away some of the best paintings, pretending that I considered them no more than amusing novelties—yet at the same time giving just the barest hint of jealousy. “I’ve hired Dorcas,” I said testily, “to work for me—not for the Museum of Modern Art.” And I was very careful not to draw any comparisons between her paintings and those of Christine: our mutual friends could be relied upon to do that.

When Christine came to see me, ostensibly to discuss our quarrel “like two sensible people”, I knew that she was on the run. So I capitulated gracefully as we took tea in the drawing room, beneath one of Dorcas’s most impressive productions. (Full moon rising over the lagoon—very cold, blue, and mysterious. I was really quite proud of it.) There was not a word about the picture, or about Dorcas; but Christine’s eyes told me all I wanted to know. The next week, an exhibition she had been planning was quietly cancelled.

Gamblers say that you should quit when you’re ahead of the game. If I had stopped to think, I should have known that Christine would not let the matter rest there. Sooner or later, she was bound to counter-attack.