“We had now arrived at the museum and our attention was directed to the pictures. Once more I was impressed by Elliott’s knowledge and taste. He shepherded me around the rooms as though I were a group of tourists, and no professor of art could have discoursed more instructively than he did. Making up my mind to come again by myself when I could wander at will and have a good time, I submitted; after a while he looked at his watch.
“‘Let us go,’ he said. ‘I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one’s power of appreciation persists. We will finish another day.’
“I thanked him warmly when we separated. I went my way perhaps a wiser but certainly a peevish man.”
W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge