As they walked along, Arnold was saying to Sylvia with a listless appreciation: "You certainly know the last word of the game, don't you, Sylvia? I bet Morrison hasn't had a jolt like that for years."
"What are you talking about?" asked Sylvia, perhaps slightly overdoing her ignorance of his meaning.
"Why, it's a new thing for him, let me tell you, to have a girl jump up as soon as he comes in and delightedly leave him to another girl. And then to thank the other girl for being willing to take him off your hands,—that's more than knowing the rules,—that's art!" He laughed faintly at the recollection. "It's a new one for Morrison to meet a girl who doesn't kowtow. He's a very great personage in his line, and he can't help knowing it. The very last word on Lord-knows-what-all in the art business is what one Felix Morrison says about it. He's an eight-cylinder fascinator too, into the bargain. Mostly he makes me sore, but when I think about him straight, I wonder how he manages to keep on being as decent as he is—he's really a good enough sort!—with all the high-powered petticoats in New York burning incense. It's enough to turn the head of a hydrant. That's the hold Madrina has on him. She doesn't burn any incense. She wants all the incense there is being burned, for herself; and it keeps old Felix down in his place—keeps him hanging around too. You stick to the same method if you want to make a go of it."
"I thought he wrote. I thought he did aesthetic criticisms and essays," said Sylvia, laughing aloud at Arnold's quaint advice.
"Oh, he does. I guess he's chief medicine-man in his tribe all right. It's not only women who kowtow; when old man Merriman wants to know for sure whether to pay a million for a cracked Chinese vase, he always calls in Felix Morrison. Chief adviser to the predatory rich, that's one of his jobs! So you see," he came back to his first point, "it must be some jolt for the sacred F.M. to have a young lady, just a young lady, refuse to bow at the shrine. You couldn't have done a smarter trick, by heck! I've been watching you all those weeks, just too tickled for words. And I've been watching Morrison. It's been as good as a play! He can't stick it out much longer, unless I miss my guess, and I've known him ever since I was a kid. He's just waiting for a good chance to turn on the faucet and hand you a full cup of his irresistible fascination." He added carelessly, bouncing a ball up and down on the tense catgut of his racquet: "What all you girls see in that old wolf-hound, to lose your heads over! It gets me!"
"Why in the world 'wolf-hound'?" asked Sylvia.
"Oh, just as to his looks. He has that sort of tired, dignified, deep-eyed look a big dog has. I bet his eyes would be phosphorescent at night too. They are that kind; don't you know, when you strike a match in the evening, how a dog's eyes glow? It's what makes 'em look so soft and deep in the daytime. But as to his innards—no, Lord no! Whatever else Morrison is he's not a bit like any dog that ever lived—first cousin to a fish, I should say."
Sylvia laughed. "Why not make it grizzly bear, to take in the rest of the animal kingdom?"
"No," persisted Arnold. "Now I've thought of it, I mean fish, a great big, wise old fellow, who lives in a deep pool and won't rise to any ordinary fly." He made a brain-jolting change of metaphor and went on: "The plain truth, and it's not so low-down as it seems, is that a big fat check-book is admission to the grandstand with Felix. It has to be that way! He hasn't got much of his own, and his tastes are some—"
"Molly must be sitting in the front row, then," commented Sylvia indifferently, as though tired of the subject. They were now at the tennis-court. "Run over to the summer-house and get my racquet, will you? It's on the bench."