Then the storm howled forth again. Everyone talked to his or her neighbor at top voice. Now and then pauses in the music left fag ends of conversation struggling about the room.
"The decadents are simply the people who refuse to write twaddle for the magazines...."
"The way to make a name in the world is to own a soap factory and ape William Morris on the side...."
"I can always tell when it is Spring by looking at the haberdashers' windows. To watch shirts and ties blooming is so much nicer than flowers and those smelly things...."
"The pleasantest things in the world all begin with a P. Powders, patches and poses—what should we do without them?..."
This sort of thing came out at loose ends now and then. Suddenly the music ceased altogether. The diners all looked as if they had been caught in a crime. The lights went out in the room, and there were little smothered shrieks. After an interval, a rosy glow lit up the conservatory beyond the palms; a little stage showed in the distance. Some notorious people from the music-halls began to do songs and dances, and offer comic monologues. The diners fell into a sort of lethargy. They did not even notice that Orson Vane's chair was empty.
Vane was in a little boudoir lent him by the hostess. His nostrils dilated with the perfume of her that he felt everywhere. He sank into a silk-covered chair, before which he had arranged a full-length mirror, and several smaller glasses, with candles glowing all about him. He was conscious of a cloying sense of happiness over his physical perfections. He stripped garment after garment from him with a care, a gentleness that argued his belief that haste was a foe to beauty. He stretched himself at full length, in epicurean enjoyment of himself. The flame of life, he told himself, burnt the more steadily the less we wrapped it up. If we could only return to the pagan life! And yet—what charm there was in dress! The body had, after all, a monotony, a sameness; the tenderest of its curves, the rosiest of its surfaces, must pall. But the infinite variety of clothes! The delight of letting the most delicate tints of gauze caress the flesh, while to the world only the soberest stuffs were exposed! The rustle of fresh linen, the perfume that one could filter through the layers of one's attire!
Orson Vane closed his eyes, lazily, musingly. At that moment his proper soul was quite in subjection; the ecstasy in the usurping soul was all-powerful.
He was thinking of what the cheval-glass in that little room must have seen.
It would be unspeakably fine to be a mirror.