“The next innings,” I remarked, “will exemplify the second stage of the female relation to the man of action.”
I don’t think either of them took the trouble to understand.
XII
A MODERN SABINE
“Ah, that’s the trouble. We’re all far too complex nowadays.”
“We live in a complex age,” I returned profoundly.
“True, very true,” he replied, and twisted the ribbon of his eyeglass round one finger. “Very little is left that is simple and primitive and beautiful.”
I favoured him with the cosmic shrug of his cult, and said nothing eloquently. The understanding was complete.
Cicely Vicars’s “evening” was ground I had not hitherto explored, and I had marked for my own at once the young man drooping mincingly over the piano. He was smooth and fair, inclined to premature stoutness, and looked remotely. Mrs. Vicars informed me that he was a playwright, a dramatic critic, and a Fashion; that he promised brilliant things, and that the name under which he wrought was Eleanor Macquoid. She added that he had intuition beyond his years.
Now people went to Mrs. Vicars’s “evening” for intellectual intercourse and the exchange of ideas—an object in which they would not be balked. Carrie had said as much to me.
“You ought to come, Rol,” she had remarked on one occasion. “It’s so—it’s awfully new, Rol, really.”