Mrs. Melville’s suppressed agitation made her stays creak.
“Do you really think that James is not a great artist?” she breathed.
“I think he is not worth while.”
“Wow!” cried Tracy. “Oh, I say—”
“Aunt Rebecca; you can not mean—” this was Mrs. Melville, choking with horror.
“His style,” repeated the unmoved iconoclast, “his style has the remains of great beauty; all his separate phrases, if you wish, are gems; and he is a literary lapidary; but his sentences are so subtle, so complex, so intricately compounded, and so discursive that I get a pain in the back of my neck before I find out what he may mean; and then—I don’t agree with him! Now is it worth while to put in so much hard reading only to be irritated?”
“I beg pardon,” Winter interposed, with masculine pusillanimity evading taking sides in the question at issue, “I thought we were going to have some music; why don’t you boys give us some college songs? Here is a mandolin.”
Aunt Rebecca’s still luminous eyes went from the speaker to Janet Smith in the corner. She said something about hearing the music better from the other side of the balcony. Now (as Mrs. Millicent very truly explained) there was not a ha’pennyworth’s difference in favor of one side over the other; but she followed in the wake of her imperious aunt.
The colonel drew nearer to Janet Smith; in order to sink his voice below disturbing the music-lovers he found it necessary to sit on a pile of cushions at her feet.
“Did you know Mercer will be back to-night?” he began, a long way from his ultimate object. He noticed that leaning back in the shadow her ready smile had dropped from her face, which looked tired. “I want to tell you a little story about Mercer,” he continued; “may I? It won’t take long.”