"And now my dear Miss Milton, I shall apologise for my rudeness. I never asked you if you expected anyone, but took for granted that my company would be agreeable. I ask your pardon. How are you, and how is your very good brother? Dear old Milt." She was all animation.
"I'm glad you like Milt. I adore him. What a pity he is going to be a priest." Ulick looked surprised. She coloured. "I mean," she pursued, "he should have picked out a more liberal profession."
"Religion is so narrowing,"—"Religion is an ensemble of scruples that impede the faculty of reason," he interrupted in sing-song tones. "Who said that?" she quickly asked. "I think the learned Professor Salomon Reinach." "You are right but your quotation is incorrect." For the third time that morning he was surprised. A blue-stocking, a theologian in petticoats; perhaps an agnostic. Yet she didn't seem "modern" or of the over-cultured type. "What Reinach wrote is this: 'Religion is a sum of scruples which impede the free exercise of our faculties.'" She pronounced this little speech as if such definitions were the daily bread of her discourse. "Aren't those eggs delicious?" he asked. He was nettled. He wished to change the tide of conversation. She assented and smiled at him with such a mischievous smile, both a challenge and a conciliation, that he laughed. She laughed, and she extended her hand to him. He took it. The incident became a memory.
Her hands were not small; shapely and capable, they were white and carefully tended. He had made a study of the hand. Why shouldn't he? A pianist, a writer, who hated the type-machine, believing that only with the pen, the stylus, could a man create prose and poetry; all the rest is commercial. Yet the hands of Mona were not what he called the hands of an artist. Their forms were largely-moulded, the fingers, charged with character; the tips were not spatula-shaped. His curiosity was aroused. They awaited the fish. "Let me look at the palm of your left hand," he pleaded. She showed it without coquetry. He noted the deeply graven and long life-line, but the abnormal development of the Venus-hill caused him to ejaculate: "Dio mio! you must have an affectionate disposition." She said without a suspicion of mock-modesty: "I love children," and then they attacked the sole. He couldn't help admiring her forthright manner. A candid girl. Therefore a good girl. And how interesting. She thought: If he doesn't like my plain speaking he isn't the man for me. Love me, love my doll, she whimsically concluded. If the secrets of a maiden's and youth's souls could be spilled on the table, as salt is sometimes spilled, many a marriage made in heaven or hell would never be consummated. For ten minutes their teeth were busy.
She didn't smoke because in those days ladies were not supposed to know the taste of cigarettes. There are minor drawbacks in every age. She saw his long, nervous fingers with their suggestion of finesse, of power, saw the oval face and the clear-cut features—his profile made her dream of the profiles of decadent emperors of the Lower Empire; saw that his nose and brow modulated in the Napoleonic way, a common enough trait throughout the Midi of France; saw his sensual lips, and simply loved the kindly glance of his heavily-lidded blue eyes; blue of a penetrating, celestial intensity. His vitality was concentrated in his eyes, which were always speculative, seldom tender. Ulick, thou art a jewel! she murmured, and thereafter to herself named him Jewel. (As had Easter, before her).
He saw, what he had with clairvoyance called an interesting girl. He didn't say pretty or beautiful; sympathetic, would be a more truthful ascription. His experienced glance roved over her face and figure. He measured, as would an architect, the latent powers of strength and resistance in her muscular conformation. Not a skinny bird, anyhow, he said with a sigh of relief. He is undressing me now, she thought. If he were, it was not in a salacious spirit. Voluptuary as he was, Ulick didn't feel a spark of erotic emotion for his companion. His admiration for her was sexually disinterested. She hasn't the pull of sex like Easter, yet I don't know—she is not awakened.
"Sir critic, when you have made all the specifications, registered the shortcomings, won't you please say something? I'm dying to hear about myself. Milt has told me of your ambitions. I wonder, though, that you should have left Paris for this noisy Tophet of a New York." It was his turn to color. The damned girl seemed to know exactly the nature of the stew simmering in his mental laboratory. But no young man of spirit needs a second invitation to talk about himself, his ways, his days, his mighty ambitions. He broke loose and at once she was swirled along on the swift crest of his eloquence.
He told her of his family, of his Parisian life, of his distinguished friends, of Jena, Weimar, Liszt and Nietzsche. He explained why he had selected New York as the best vantage-ground, the best waiting spot from which to wage war with his future public. He spoke of his music. He spoke of his physical strength. She interrupted to inquire why he, Paris-born, neither smoked nor drank. Surely not because of puritanical reasons. He violently demurred; then in an indiscreet burst of confidence he related the reason why Goethe didn't use tobacco; he didn't mince words; she understood, but didn't blush, as another girl might have done. Tobacco, he ingenuously declared, attenuates the virile quality of a man, wine is also dangerous no matter what the poets sing. Yes, but what will-power is yours, she commented. He expanded his chest and straightway stared into her eager eyes. Then it was, for the first time since they met, each looked another way. They had both seen things not set down every day on the human slate. She felt positively uncomfortable, and he said to himself: Steady old chap is the mot d'ordre. She is Milt's sister!
"I write about the stage because I can no longer endure listening to music. I tried my hand at musical criticism when I first landed. Now, as the curtain goes up at the opera, I have a queer feeling in the pit of my stomach. I call it aesthetic nausea. To hear over and over again the same old arias, the same bad singing, and then the stale phrases that we are compelled to write after each performance—phew! What a waste of time, what a re-chewing of banal ideas. And then, the receptive frame of mind; always listening to other men's ideas, or the lack of them. Again I say—what a sheer waste of time for any one who wishes to be individual, to create, no matter how slight the performance." He paused for lack of wind. "Go on," she urged. "The theatres are pretty bad, but at least you are dealing with actuality. Once in a while a play comes along by Ibsen, and then you are in contact with the stuff of life. Music is technical, emotional as it may be; but just try to write of it in terms of emotion and your pathos is soon bathos. Pictures are easier to handle because they resemble something in the world. Music does not. It is dug out of our subliminal self, brought to the surface of our consciousness by the composer's art—self-explorer is a truer title than composer, who as a matter of fact decomposes his soul-states, distils his most precious essence into tone. But I fear I bore you—Miss Mona." "Go on," she commanded.
"Well there isn't much further to go on, I am glad for your sake. I soon abandoned music, which I love all the better for not being forced to write about it. I felt strange at the opera house, I didn't become closely acquainted with my colleagues, so I was glad when the "Clarion" gave me the berth of dramatic critic. Now I can fight every day with erudite William Winter—Lord! how that little man can write English— over the Ibsen problem. Wagner is accepted here, yet a more original thinker, Henrik Ibsen, is slighted, is even called immoral, he the most moral of dramatists. Let's go for a ride," he exclaimed, "a beautiful day wasted over sterile aesthetics. What do you say—Miss Mona?" (That's twice he called me Mona!) She consented. The prospect of a trip through the park sitting next to this lively young man pleased her. "We shan't take a cab. I like a hansom better. Don't you love the good old English hansom with the slightly shabby but always sympathetic driver wearing a battered silk hat tipped on the side of his disreputable skull? Besides Miss Mona—a hansom is Cupid's chariot. Let's go." When Ulick started in earnest he was irresistible. He hailed a hansom. They hopped in. To the park!