"When a poet like Orrin Munger refers to himself as a Cubist and a Futurist, it must have some occult significance. Besides, he went about a good deal last winter, and I met him."
"What did you think of him?" asked Desboro drily.
"I scarcely knew. He is odd. He kissed everybody's hand and spoke with such obscurity about his work—referred to it in such veiled terms that, somehow, it all seemed a wonderful mystery to me."
Desboro smiled: "The man who is preëminent in his profession," he said quietly, "never makes a mystery of it. He may be too tired to talk about it, too saturated with it, after the day's work, to discuss it; but never fool enough to pretend that there is anything occult in it or in the success he has made of it. Only incompetency is self-conscious and secretive; only the ass strikes attitudes."
Jacqueline looked at him with pride unutterable. She thought as he did.
He smiled at her, encouraged, and went on:
"The complacent tickler of phrases, the pseudo-intellectual scrambler after subtleties that do not exist, the smirking creators of the tortuous, the writhing explorers of the obvious, who pretend to find depths where there are shallows, the unusual where only the commonplace and wholesome exist—these will always parody real effort, and ape real talent in all creative professions, and do more damage than mere ignorance or even mere viciousness could ever accomplish. And, to my mind, that is all there is and all there ever will be to men like Munger."
Daisy laughed and looked at Herrendene.
"Then I've wasted your morning!" she said, pretending contrition.