"Ah!" sighs Vane pityingly. "It is all new and strange to you. Æstheticism, as interpreted by modern hierophants, is, of course, essentially different from the Hellenic school; but its aim and object is the same—to beautify the common things of life, to ennoble the soul, as well as please the eye and elevate the senses."
"Well, I am not sufficiently up in the subject to understand or argue about it," laughed the Colonel. "Perhaps after to-night——"
"Ah, yes! Wait till you see her!" cries Vane enthusiastically. "She who has converts by the hundred, whose intellect is as beautiful as the body which is its temple; to whom not only the worship but the perception of art is a natural and exquisite impulse; whose grace, whose mind, whose movements——"
"Oh, for Heaven's sake spare me any more 'serpentine' descriptions!" entreats Carlisle. "I am quite ready to believe in this wonderful high priestess of yours. Is she anything like Ellen Terry?"
"Ellen Terry is sublime also," says Vane rebukingly. "There's not another actress on the stage could walk in those clinging draperies of hers. Is she not a poem?"
"She acted one," says the Colonel dryly. "I saw her in 'The Cup.' I am not educated up to the appreciation of subtleties yet."
"I have met at least a dozen fair-haired girls who have all told me they were considered 'so like Ellen Terry,'" puts in Trentermain. "I began to think she must be a 'priestess' also."
"Ah, there are a good many changes since I was in London last," says the Colonel. "But there, I see you are impatient to be off. You—you don't mean to say you are going to wear that flower, Vane?"
He points to a gardenia in his button-hole as he speaks.
"Yes; why not?" demands his friend in surprise.