"Oh," he murmured, "the perfumes. So sweet!" He buried his nose in a handful of the sachet-bags. He sprayed some Maria Farina on his forehead. Perfumes, he considered, were worth worship just as much as jewels or music. The more sinful a perfume seemed, the more stimulating it was to the imagination. Some perfumes were like drawings by Beardsley.
He looked at the walls. He really must get some Beardsleys put up. There was nothing like a Beardsley for jogging a sluggish fancy; if you wanted to see everything that milliners and dressmakers existed by hiding, all you had to do was to sup sufficiently on Beardsley. He thought of inventing a Beardsley cocktail; if he could find a mixture that would make the brain quite pagan, he would certainly give it that name.
His mind roved to the feud between the Montagues and Capulets of the town. It was one of those modern feuds, made up of little social frictions, infinitesimal jealousies, magnified by a malicious press into a national calamity. It was a feud, he told himself, that he would have to mend. It would mean, for him, the lustre from both houses. And there was nothing, in the smart world, like plenty of lustre. There were several sorts of lustre: that of money, of birth, and of public honors. Personally, he cared little for the origin of his lustre; so it put him in the very forefront of smartness he asked for nothing more. Of course, his own position was quite impeccable. The smart world might narrow year by year; the Newport set, and the Millionaire set, and the Knickerbocker set—they might all dwindle to one small world of smartness; yet nothing that could happen could keep out an Orson Vane. The name struck him, as it shaped itself in his mind, a trifle odd. An Orson Vane? Yes, of course, of course. For that matter, who had presumed to doubt the position of a Vane? He asked himself that, with a sort of defiance. An Orson Vane, an Orson Vane? He repeated the syllables over and over, in a whisper at first, and then aloud, until the shrillness of his tone gave him a positive start.
He rang the bell for Nevins.
"Nevins," he said, and something in him fought against his speech, "tell me, that's a good man,—is there anything, anything wrong with—me?"
"Nothing sir," said Nevins stolidly.
Orson Vane gave a sort of gasp as the man withdrew. It had come to him suddenly; the under-self was struggling beneath the borrowed self. He was Orson Vane, but he was also another.
Who? What other?
He gave a little shrill laugh as he remembered. Reggie Hart,—that was it,—Reggie Hart.
He sat down to undress for sleep. He slipped into bed as daintily as a woman, nestling to the perfumed pillows.