“You are jesting, Ethel,” said Will. “You are not going to compare gymnastics with dramatic art?”
“Why not? Do you know anything more beautiful than a beautiful gesture? What comedy, what drama can moralize us more than beauty which makes us blush for our own ugliness, and for our poor limbs, like consumptive chickens or stuffed turkeys! It is the training-school of the will and of energy.”
“If she were beautiful as Venus,” Will retorted, “I’d never choose for a wife an acrobat, offering me her heart with a triple high leap.”
“Of course,” said Ethel, “and you would be right; each one in his own sphere. That is one of the conditions of happiness, and society with us has intangible laws which only the unclassed and the blasé venture to break. We do not live in the East, where slaves become queens,—not even in Morgania, a country of icons and superstition; in such countries anything is natural, the only rule being the good pleasure of the master. After all, it is one prejudice instead of another!”
Phil now came to find them. He had recognized them, from a distance, in the crowd, by the shimmering of their parasols. He recounted to Ethel his interview with Poufaille. He looked delighted; everything must have passed off well.
“There are prejudices everywhere,” Ethel went on. “Yourself, Yvonne—do you never stand out against prejudice? I will take Monsieur Phil for witness.”
“In what, please?” Yvonne asked.
“For one example, in walking with us among hundreds of men,—those fearful men of whom you spoke with such terror in Phil’s studio; don’t you remember?”
“Oh,” said Yvonne, looking around her indifferently, “these good country people in their blue blouses? It was not that I meant, Miss Ethel.”
“Then men in blue blouses are not men?” Ethel answered, laughing. “It’s like women in maillots,—they don’t count! What do you think, Phil?”