“Oh, the cunning little girl over there!” exclaimed the tall and lovely Damaris, greeting Barres with cordial, outstretched hands. “Where did you find such an engaging little thing?”
“You don’t recognise her?” he asked, amused.
“I? No. Should I?”
“She’s Dulcie Soane, the girl at the desk down-stairs!” said Barres, delighted. “This is her party. She has just graduated from high school, and she——”
“Belongs to Barres,” interrupted Esmé Trenor in his drawling voice. “Unusual, isn’t she, Damaris?—logical anatomy, ornamental, vague development; nice lines, not obvious—like yours, Damaris,” he added impudently. Then waving his lank hand with its over-polished nails: “I like the indefinite accented with one ripping value. Look at that hair!—lac and burnt orange rubbed in, smeared, then wiped off with the thumb! You follow the intention, Barres?”
“You talk too much, Esmé,” interrupted Damaris tartly. “Who is that lovely being talking to the little Soane girl, Garry?”
“A friend of my Paris days—Thessalie Dunois——” Again he checked himself to turn and greet Corot Mandel, subtle creator and director of exotic spectacles—another tall and rather heavily built man, with a mop of black and shiny hair, a monocle, and sanguine features slightly oriental.
With Corot Mandel had come Elsena Helmund—an attractive woman of thoroughbred origin and formal environment, and apparently fed up with both. For she frankly preferred “grades” to “registered stock,” and she prowled through every art and theatrical purlieu from the Mews to Westchester, in eternal and unquiet search for an antidote to the sex-ennui which she erroneously believed to be an intellectual necessity for self-expression.
“Who is that winning child with red hair?” she enquired, nodding informal recognition to the other guests, whom she already knew. “Don’t tell me,” she added, elevating a quizzing glass and staring at Dulcie, “that this engaging infant has a history already! It isn’t possible, with that April smile in her child eyes!”