According to Plato

by Frank Frankfort Moore

CHAPTER XVIII

When she was quite sure that he had gone—quite gone, beyond the likelihood of another return to say something that he had omitted to say or to take back something that he had already said, she threw herself back on a sofa and yawned ostentatiously—almost insultingly at her own reflection in a mirror that hung in the centre of one of the silk panels—and then it seemed that it was for the first time in her life that she perceived how curious was the design of the mirror. The silvered glass was a Florentine one and at one curved edge it was cut with a charming intaglio of a boy chasing a butterfly. On the opposite curve there was a girl with a bird on her finger. Butterflies and birds were cut all over the glass except in the centre. The frame of the mirror was of beaten silver, and the design was that of a number of cupids bending, as it were, over the brink of the glass to see the face that it reflected. And some were fixing their arrows in their little silver bows to shoot at the glass and its reflection.

She lay back and laughed quite merrily at the thought that often as she had looked at that charming work of art, she had never before noticed the significance of the design. It interested her so greatly just now that she actually rose from her sofa and stood before it, examining its infinity of detail for several minutes. Then she threw herself once again back among her cushions and laughed.

She had never before had such a funny interview with any one in all her life, she thought, and the funny part of it all was to be found in the seriousness of the man. If he had meant to be jocular he would have been a dead failure. But he had been desperately serious from the moment he had entered the room, and had gone on talking gravely as if he had been talking sense and not nonsense.

That was the funny part of the business.

The aid of Mr. Richmond had never been needed to make her aware of the fact that the novel writers who produce the greatest amount of nonsense are those who write seriously—who take themselves seriously and talk about having a message to deliver. Such, she was well aware, are the novel writers who perish after a year or two, for the only imperishable quality in a novel is wit. Wit is the boric acid that makes a novel “keep,” she knew. But here was a live man coming to her with a message to deliver to her ears, and although he took himself quite seriously she had not found him dull—certainly not dull as the novels with the “message” are dull. What he had to say to her had surprised her at the outset of his interview with her and had kept her excited until he had gone away—nay, longer, for what he had said to her on his return after an absence of perhaps ten seconds, was, she thought, the most exciting part of her afternoon.

But after all he had talked such nonsense as a child who knew nothing of the world would talk. All the time that he was talking to her she felt that she was listening to the prattle of a boy child asking her if she would play at being sweethearts, and laying down certain rules of the game—decreeing that if he were to get tired of having her for a sweetheart, she must not get cross with him for leaving her, and at the same time, with a high sense of fairness, affirming that if she tired of him and told him to go back to the nursery he would not beat her with his fists.

Yes, he had talked just as any little boy in a sailor suit, and with a little bucket in one hand and a little spade in the other might talk while the day was young, and his gravity had made the scene very funny to her.

But then the fact of her thinking of the resemblance between him and the little boy, caused her to recall what he had said about treating him as gently as a baby should be treated. Yes, he was not to be looked on as a lover, but only as the rough material that might eventually shape itself into a lover. This was one of the rules of the game at which he wanted her to play, and it was quite worthy of him.