"'Just imagine! You know my little pet-dog. I bought him of a lady-in-waiting. He has the most exquisite tact and feels happy only in genteel society. An hour ago my maid suddenly left my flat, and expecting, as I did, a lady of very high standing, I did a little dusting and cleaning in my room. When my Toto saw that; when he watched me actually doing housemaid's work, he cried bitterly. He could not bear the idea of my demeaning myself with work unfit for a lady. It was really too touching for words. When I saw the refined sense of genteeldom in Toto's eyes, I too began crying. And so we both cried.'
"When I had lived through several scenes of the character just described, I could not help thinking that we Athenians were perhaps much wiser than the modern men, in that we did not allow our women to appear in society. They were, it is true, seldom interesting, nor physically greatly developed. On the other hand they never bored us with types of what these little ones call society ladies. I cannot but remember the exquisite evenings which I spent at the house of Critias, where one of our wittiest hetairai, or emancipated women, imitated the false manners, hypocrisy and inane pomp of the society ladies of Thebes in Egypt. We laughed until we could see no longer. What Leontion, that hetaira, represented was exactly what I observed in my lady friend in London. The same disheartening dryness of soul; the same exasperating superficiality of intellect; the same lack of all real refinement, that I found a few centuries later in society in the times of the Roman Cæsars.
"London desiccates; whereas Athens or Paris animates. When I gave up my relation to Entréa, I met a woman of about thirty-four, whose head was so perfect that Evænetus himself has never engraved a more absolutely beautiful one. Her hair was not only golden of the most lovely tint, but also full of waves, from long curls in Doric adagio, to tantalising Corinthian pizzicato frizzles all round. Her face was a cameo cut in onyx, and both lovely and severe. Her loveliness was in the upper part of her face; her severity round the mouth and the chin. This strange reversal of what is usually the case gave her a character of her own. Her stark blue eyes were big and cold, yet sympathetic and intelligent-looking; and her ears were the finest shells that Leucothea presented her mother with from the wine-coloured ocean, and inside the shells were the most enchanting pearls, which the sea-nymph then left in the mouth of the blessed babe as her teeth. She was not tall, but very neatly made; a fausse maigre. She wrote bright articles, in which from time to time she wrapped up a big truth in bon-bon paper.
"There was in her the richest material for the most enchanting womanhood; a blend of Musarion and Aspasia; or to talk modern style, a blend of Mademoiselle l'Espinasse with Madame Récamier. She was neither. Not that she made any preposterous effort to be, what Paris calls, a Madame Récamier. But London desiccated her. From dry by nature, she became drier still by London. Being as dry as she was, she only cared for mystic things; for what is behind the curtain of things; for the borderland of knowledge and dream. As sand can never drink in enough rain, so dry souls want to intoxicate themselves with mystic alcohol. In vulgarly dry persons that rain from above becomes—mud; in refinedly dry souls it is atomised into an intellectual spray. Her whole soul was athirst of that spray.
"When I told her that I was the son of Clinias, she wanted to know first of all, what had been going on at the mysteries of Eleusis. I told her that, like all the Hellenes, I had sworn never to reveal what I had seen at the holy ceremonies. This she could not understand. In her religion the priests are but too anxious to initiate anybody that cares for it.
"'Initiate me—oh initiate me—I beg you,' she said, and looked more beautiful than ever. Her arm trembled; her voice faltered. Even if I did not respect my oath, I should not have told her the teachings of Eleusis. They were far too simple for her mystery-craving soul. So I told her of the Orphic mysteries, and the more she heard of the extravagant and mind-shaking rites and tenets, the more interested she became. Her mouth, usually so severe, swung again in pouty lines of youthful timidity, and her voice got a 'cello down of mellowness.
"'Let us introduce Orphism into this country,' she exclaimed. 'Will you be honorary treasurer?'
"I accepted," said Alcibiades. "Within three days Orphism was presented as the Orphic Science. The members were called priestesses, archontes, or acolytes, according to their degree. Within a month there were 843 members. Jamblichus was sent for and made secretary. Costumes were invented; pamphlets printed; cures promised; shares offered. It was declared that trances and mystic shivers would be procured 'while you wait'; dreams accounted for; inexplicables explained; the curtain of things raised every Friday at five, after tea. Finally the Orphics gave their first dinner at the Hotel Cecil.
"That was the worst blow. After that I abandoned Orphism."