There were many other interesting questions, all of which Polly was eager to answer, but time was too limited for her to say all she wished to. For instance, she wanted to describe, at length, Greek art and the Greek nation that was characteristic for its own type of art and ornament.
She was anxious to tell what she knew about color and its importance in art. Of polychromy and what it was. In fact, she needed hours in which to speak fully of the difference between Greek, Egyptian and Assyrian art and ornament.
Eleanor on her part, wrote graphically of the difference between the Arabs and Persians, and how their modes and habits had a corresponding effect on art. She liked to describe the style of Romanesque art and how it governed all Eastern Europe at one time.
Eleanor leaned to the Moorish classics and had a weakness for Turkish designs; she loved the warm coloring used by the Moors in their work, and the harsh bright colors employed by the Turks. She had no hesitation in selecting from samples shown, the Mohammedan designs, the Chinese, the Byzantine, or Arabian patterns. She was expert in stating why the fall of Rome affected all art in Eastern and Western Europe, and what was its highest development and its period of all architecture.
It was more than an hour later than usual, when the two girls put away their work and started out for home. The scholars who lived on streets uptown, had gone long before, and Polly and Eleanor found that the high wind made it impossible for them to open their umbrellas.
“It’s so icy we will have to use them as props,” laughed Polly.
“My! But this sleet in one’s face is cold, isn’t it?” gasped Eleanor.
“Let’s take a short cut across the Plaza,” suggested Polly, breaking into a run across the diamond that separates the streets at Third and Fourth avenues, and Eighth street.
Having reached the small oasis about the subway station, Eleanor said: “Why not take the subway, here, to Twenty-eighth street, Poll?”
“Oh, I hate those subways! This wonderful sleet and the quiet hissing of the ice on the windows and walks makes me feel as if I were home. No clatter of wheels, no shouting of burly men, no nothing that makes a city so horrid. Let’s walk all the way home.”