“It is my first communion dress.... I’ve had to make it longer for a graduation dress.”
“Oh, that’s so; you’re graduating this summer!”
“Yes.”
“And what then?”
“Nothing.” She sighed unconsciously and sat very still with folded hands, while Aristocrates refilled her glass of water.
She no longer felt embarrassed; her gravity matched Aristocrates’s; she seriously accepted whatever was offered or set before her, but Barres noticed that she ate it all, merely leaving on her plate, with inculcated and mathematical precision, a small portion as concession to good manners.
They had, toward the banquet’s end, water ices, bon-bons, French pastry, and ice cream. And presently a slight and blissful sigh of repletion escaped the child’s red lips. The symptoms were satisfactory but unmistakable; Dulcie was perfectly feminine; her capacity had proven it.
The Prophet’s stately self-control in the fragrant vicinity of nourishment was now to be rewarded: Barres conducted Dulcie to the studio and installed her among cushions upon a huge sofa. Then, lighting a cigarette, he dropped down beside her and crossed one knee over the other.
“Dulcie,” he said in his lazy, humorous way, “it’s a funny old world any way you view it.”