“Ach! it is heavenly!” and the Baroness smelt at the penholder with an inimitable expression of delight. Everybody began to laugh—El-Râmi silenced them by a look.
“Madame you are under some delusion,” he said quietly.—“You have no lilies in your hand, only a penholder.”
She laughed.
“You are very funny!” she said—“but I shall not be deceived. I shall wear my lilies.”
And she endeavoured to fasten the penholder in the front of her bodice,—when suddenly El-Râmi drew his hand away from hers. A startled expression passed over her face, but in a minute or two she recovered her equanimity and twirled the penholder placidly between her fingers.
“Zere is what you call ze Actual,” she said, taking up the conversation where it had previously been interrupted.—“A penholder is always a penholder—you can make nothing more of it.”
But here she was surrounded by the excited onlookers—a flood of explanations poured upon her, as to how she had taken that same penholder for a spray of lilies, and so forth, till the old lady grew quite hot and angry.
“I shall not pelieve you!” she said indignantly.—“It is impossible. You haf a joke—but I do not see it. Irene”—and she looked appealingly to Madame Vassilius, who had witnessed the whole scene—“it is not true, is it?”
“Yes, dear Baroness, it is true,” said Irene soothingly.—“But it is a nothing after all. Your eyes were deceived for the moment—and Mr. El-Râmi has shown us very cleverly, by scientific exposition, how the human sight can be deluded—he conveyed an impression of lilies to your brain, and you saw lilies accordingly. I quite understand,—it is only through the brain that we receive any sense of sight. The thing is easy of comprehension, though it seems wonderful.”
“It is devilry!” said the Baroness solemnly, getting up and shaking out her voluminous pink train with a wrathful gesture.