'Les belles out le goût des héros. Le sabreur
Effroyable, trainant après lui tant d'horreur
Qu'il ferait reculer jusqu'à la sombre Hécate,
Charme la plus timide et la plus delicate.
Sur ce, battez tambours! Ce qui plait à la bouche
De la blonde aux yeux doux, c'est le baiser farouche.
La femme se fait faire avec joie un enfant,
Par l'homme qui tua, sinistre et triomphant.
Et c'est la volupté de toutes ces colombes
D'ouvrir leur lit à ceux qui font ouvrir les tombes.'
"What rhythm! What music! The score is Napoleonic but——"
"Hello!" Verelst interrupted. Before the window a car had passed. He was looking at it. On the back seat was a man in a high hat and an overcoat. "M. P.!" he exclaimed.
"What of it?" Jones asked.
Verelst removed his glasses and looked distrustfully at them. It was as though he doubted their vision. Then, after a moment he said: "Last night I heard he was dying."
"Which," Jones remarked, "is the aim, the object and the purpose of life. But apparently he has not achieved it yet. Apparently also you are a futurist. The Napoleonic score did not interest you."
Verelst, resuming his glasses, replied: "It would not interest Lennox, if that is what you mean. He has been hit too hard."
Jones nodded. He knew all about it. It had even suggested a story, a famous story; one that was told in Babylon and has been retold ever since; the story of lovers vilely parted in the beginning and virtuously united at the end. It is a highly original story, to which anybody can give a fresh twist and Jones had planned to have the hero killed at the front and the heroine marry the villain, but only to divorce the latter before the hero—whose death had been falsely gazetted—limps in.
But Jones knew his trade. He knew that the reader always balks unless the hero gets the heroine firsthand and he had thought of making the villain an invalid. Yet at that too he knew the reader would balk. The reader is so nice-minded!
Now, the plot recurring, he said to Verelst: "Your knowledge of women has, I am sure, made you indulgent."