“How delightful it is to know that there are a few—alas! a very few—salons where one can go and have a chat.”
The little Apollo tripped across the room to greet Gwen and Lionel.
“My dear Mr Vane, I am afraid I am the only one here who can sympathise with you.”
“If we do not strongly oppose this vulgarising view of life, art will totally disappear from our social circles,” remarked Sinclair, as he sat down on a small settee beside Eva.
“Yes,” echoed Vane, “I am doing my level best to devise some means of checking this downfall of art. I suggested to Lord Mowbray this morning that we should invent a sort of artificial vestment. This is my plan. Each one would carry round his neck, wrist or waist, a small electric battery, which would throw a lovely colour all over one’s body, which would at least adorn, if it could not conceal it.”
“What a strange thing that we should, in a London drawing-room, openly discuss this question of nudity, when a few weeks ago no respectable person would have admitted the existence of shirt or trousers,” laughingly remarked Lady Carey.
“Ah! that was the British cant!” retorted Lionel. “Let us hail the storm which knocked that false modesty out of us all.”
“My dear Lady Carey,” resumed Vane, “it is not a question of decency at present, but a matter of artistic feeling. I should propose organising the thing in this way: Dukes would have a red colour thrown over their lordly forms; Earls and Barons a blue shade; Baronets, yellow; commoners would have no colour, but the members of the Royal Family would have red and yellow stripes. Ladies would naturally have their shades too, according to their rank: Duchesses, pink; Countesses, pale green; and so on. This is a rough sketch of course.”
“I quite see what you mean, Mr Vane,” remarked Danford; a sort of mirage peerage.
Montagu Vane glanced up at the remark, and curtly replied, “It would at all events acquaint the public with the social standing of the person whom he elbowed in the street, and differentiate a peer of the realm from a—social guide.”