She was dressed for a bridge party. Dressed—oh, the tilt of the hat over her delicate little nose; the shadow it cast over the liquid eyes, ambushing them, as it were, for the flash and spring upon the victim! But I was no victim—not I! I knew my young friend too well. She endured me more or less gladly. I sat at her feet and learned the ways of the sex, and turned them into verse, or didn’t, according to the mood of the minute. I had versified her more than once. She was a rondeau, a triolet, a trill—nothing more.
“Why mayn’t a poet look respectable as well as another?” I asked, dropping into a chair.
“Because it isn’t in the picture. You were much more effective, you folks, when you went about with long hair, and scowled, with a finger on your brows. But never mind—you’ve given us up and we’ve given you up, so it doesn’t matter what women think of you any more.”
“You never said a truer word!” I replied, lighting my cigarette at hers. “The connection between women and poetry is clean-cut for the time. As for the future—God knows! You’re not poetic any more. And it’s deuced hard, for we made you.”
“Nonsense. God made us, they say—or Adam—I never quite made out which.”
“It’s a divided responsibility, anyhow. For the Serpent dressed you. He knew his business there—he knew that beauty unadorned may do well enough in a walled garden and with only one to see and no one else to look at. But in the great world, and with competition—no! And you—you little fools, you’re undoing all his charitable work and undressing yourselves again. When I was at the dance the other night I thirsted for the Serpent to take the floor and hiss you a lecture on your stupidities.”
She pouted: “Stupidities? I’m sure the frocks were perfectly lovely.”
“As far as they went, but they didn’t go nearly far enough for the Serpent. And believe me, he knows all the tricks of the trade. He wants mystery—he wants the tremble in the lips when a man feels—‘I can’t see—I can only guess, and I guess the Immaculate, the Exquisite—the silent silver lights and darks undreamed of.’ And you—you go and strip your backs to the waist and your legs to the knees. No, believe me, the Dark Continent isn’t large enough; and when there is nothing left to explore, naturally the explorer ceases to exist.”
“I think you’re very impertinent. Look at Inez. Wasn’t she perfectly lovely? She can wear less than any of us, and wear it well.”
“I couldn’t keep my eyes off her, if you mean that. But not along the Serpent line of thought. It was mathematical. I was calculating the chances for and against, all the time—whether that indiscreet rose-leaf in front would hold on. Whether the leaf at the back would give. At last I got to counting. She’s laughing—will it last till I get to five-and-twenty? thirty? And I held on to the switches to switch off the light if it gave. The suspense was terrific. Did she hold together after midnight? I left then.”