“Art is the result of a complex mental attitude capable of producing concrete simplicity.”
“Help!” whispered Harrow, but the poet had caught his eye, and was fixing the young man with a smile that held him as sirup holds a fly.
“You ask me what is Art, young sir? Why should I not heed you? Why should I not answer you? What artificial barriers, falsely called convention, shall force me to ignore the mute eloquence of your questioning eyes? You ask me what is Art. I will tell you; it is this!” And the poet, inverting his thumb, pressed it into the air. Then, carefully inspecting the dent he had made in the atmosphere, he erased it with a gesture and folded his arms, looking gravely at Harrow, whose fascinated eyes protruded.
Behind him Lethbridge whispered hoarsely, “I told you how it would be in the New Arts Theater. I told you a young man alone was likely to get spoken to. Now those six girls know you’re a broker!”
“Don’t say it so loud,” muttered Harrow savagely. “I’m all right so far, for I haven’t said a word.”
“You’d better not,” returned the other. “I wish that curtain would go up and stay up. It will be my turn to sit next them after this act, you know.”
Harrow ventured to glance at the superb young creature sitting beside him, and at the same instant she looked up and, catching his eye, smiled in the most innocently friendly fashion—the direct, clear-eyed advance of a child utterly unconscious of self.
“I have never before been in a theater,” she said; “have you?”
“I—I beg your pardon,” stammered Harrow when he found his voice, “but were you good enough to speak to me?”
“Why, yes!” she said, surprised but amiable; “shouldn’t I have spoken to you?”