He smeared the air with inverted thumb and smiled at Mr. Frawley, who rose, somewhat agitated, and, crooking one lank arm behind his back, made a mechanical pinch at an atmospheric atom.
“If—if you do that again—if you dare to recite those verses about me, I shall go! I tell you I can’t stand any more,” breathed Aphrodite between her clenched teeth.
The young man cast his large and rather sickly eyes upon her. For a moment he was in doubt, but belief in the witchery of sound prevailed, for he had yet to meet a being insensible to the “music of the soul,” and so
with a fond and fatuous murmur he pinched the martyred atmosphere once more, and began, mousily:
All
A tear a year
My pale desire requires,
And that is all.
Enlacements weary, passion tires,
Kisses are cinder-ghosts of fires