So that was why they all looked at the door when we first came in—they thought we were the priestess herself. And we were going to be uplifted. Also we were to be psyched—a hilarious prospect for a healthy, single man! We told our hostess, however, that we were sure we would adore Mrs. De Hyphen-Jones, as we always liked 'em psychic. We were about to explain that as a rule we preferred psychic blondes, but that a good psychic brunette with a neat ankle—our hostess, however, turned and addressed the company at large.
"Just to show you how wonderful she is," she warbled ecstatically, "the very first time she honored our little home with her presence, she simply telephoned to say she was coming, and when I began to tell her the address and how to get here, she stopped me at once. 'Don't tell me,' she said, 'don't even tell me the number. For when I come down the street, I will know at once the house where you dwell by its emanation of your personality, its you-ness, so to speak.' And she did! She came straight to the door."
On every side were heard gurgles of wonder and delight—"Marvellous!" "Isn't she just too wonderful?" "Extraordinary creature of genius!" And right in the midst of that liquid chorus of enthusiasm, we had to break in with one of those inept and devastating remarks which have time and again blasted our hopes of social preferment.
"But if she telephoned to you," we said in a loud voice like the imbecile we are, "she must have seen your address in the telephone book."
There was a chilling pause of indignation and a universal glassy stare. We felt the finger of scorn burning a hole in our shirt-bosom just above our heart. It was a hideous situation for us. We glanced about anxiously for a nice, low sofa to crawl under, when there was a sudden diversion to the right.
Mrs. De Frizac-Jones!—we were a lot gladder to see her than we had ever expected to be. She stood in the doorway, a middle-aged vision in powder-blue (or so we heard one lady describe the color). She carried her head slightly on one side, and a pensive smile lit up the shadows under her blue hat with a blue-and-black ostrich-mount (more eavesdropping on our part). She held out her hand to the hostess as though it were an orchid.
"So sorry to be late," we heard her say. And then the phalanx of ladies charged as one woman, leaving us four men stranded in the middle of the floor. We looked furtively at one another, but no one winked. We were all gentlemen. Besides, we were all badly scared.
"I am so utterly exhausted," Mrs. De Frizac-Jones explained languidly, when the first wild enthusiasm of welcome had somewhat subsided. "I have been lecturing to a class of dear girls on rhythm and deportment, you know, and it takes so much out of one. But their sweet sympathy and intelligence are very reviving. I was teaching them how they must walk—stooping slightly forward, with the face gracefully uptilted. The mannish swagger of most girls nowadays is so very frightful. I told them that when they glide across a room, they must say to themselves, 'I am a lily swaying in the breeze.' And they understood at once—they are so exquisitely plastic."
All the ladies, talking together, said it was really miraculous how she thought of such lovely metaphors. And it brought the idea home to one so beautifully—a lily swaying in the breeze! Personally, we recalled that the last time we saw anyone trying to walk like a lily swaying in the breeze, was about 1.35 a.m. on a down-town thoroughfare. The person in question was trying to carry a most splendiferous slosh past a watchful guardian of the law without affording an excuse for police intervention. The result was something like a lily, and also something like a wrecking-crane that had got out of control. But we didn't tell the company this bright thought of ours. We didn't tell anybody—we had had enough of telling.
A few minutes later we were presented to the great woman. Our hostess did it with the air of one consciously heaping coals of fire on our head. She murmured something about our being a literary critic—as a matter of fact, the Managing-Editor makes us review such books as come in, because the stenographer has too much other work to do, and the last office-boy he tried it on quit.