“I won’t wear straight fronts indoors, and my garters hurt!” cried Aphrodite defiantly, preparing to slide down the banisters.
“Help!” said Wayne faintly, looking from Dione to Chlorippe, from Chlorippe to Philodice, from Philodice to Aphrodite. “I won’t have my house turned into a confounded Art Nouveau music hall. I tell you——”
“Let me tell them,” said Iole, laughing and kissing her hand to the poet as she descended the stairs in her pretty bride’s traveling gown.
She checked Aphrodite, looked wisely around at her lovely sisters, then turned to remount the stairs, summoning them with a gay little confidential gesture.
And when the breathless crew had trooped after her, and the pad of little, eager, sandaled feet had died away on the thick rugs of the landing above, the poet, clasping his fat white hands, thumbs joined, across his rotund abdomen, stole a glance at his dazed son-in-law, which was partly apprehensive and partly significant, almost cunning. “An innocent saturnalia,” he murmured. “The charming abandon of children.” He unclasped one
hand and waved it. “Did you note the unstudied beauty of the composition as my babes glided in and out following the natural and archaic yet exquisitely balanced symmetry of the laws which govern mass and line composition, all unconsciously, yet perhaps”—he reversed his thumb and left his sign manual upon the atmosphere—“perhaps,” he mused, overflowing with sweetness—“perhaps the laws of Art Nouveau are divine!—perhaps angels and cherubim, unseen, watch fondly o’er my babes, lest all unaware they guiltlessly violate some subtle canon of Art, marring the perfect symmetry of eternal preciousness.”
Wayne’s mouth was partly open, his eyes hopeless yet fixed upon the poet with a fearful fascination.
“Art,” breathed the poet, “is a solemn, a fearful responsibility. You are responsible, George, and some day you must answer for every violation of Art, to the eternal outraged fitness of things. You must answer, I must answer, every soul must answer!”
“A-ans—answer! What, for God’s sake?” stammered Wayne.
The poet, deliberately joining thumb and