He ran into Badger Spink, as a fawn in the spotted skin of a pard, his thick hair on end and two little horns projecting.
"Hello," he said briefly; "you back? Glad to see you—excuse me, but I'm chasing a little devil of a dryad——"
He caught sight of her as he spoke; the girl shrieked and fled and after her galloped the fawn, intent on capture.
Clarence Verne, colourless of skin in his sombrely magnificent Egyptian dress, extended an Egyptian hand to him—the hand he remembered so well, with its deep, pictographic cleft between forefinger and thumb.
"When did you come back, Cleland?" he inquired in that listless, drugged voice of his. "To-day? Hope we'll see something of you now.... Do you know that Nautch girl—the one in orange and silver? She's Claudia Gwynn, the actress. She hasn't got much on, has she? Can the Ball des Quat'z beat this for an unconcerned revelation of form divine?"
"I don't think it can," said Cleland, looking at a bacchante whose raiment seemed to be voluminous enough. The only trouble was that it was also transparent.
"Nobody cares any more," remarked Verne in his drowsy voice. "The restless sex has had its way. It always has been mad to shed its clothes in public. First it danced barefooted, then it capered barelegged. Loie, Isadora and Ruth St. Denis between 'em started the fashion; Bakst went 'em one better; then society tore off its shoulder-straps and shortened its petticoats; and the Australian swimming Venus stripped for the screen. It's all right; I don't care. Only it's a bore to have one's imagination become atrophied from disuse.... If I can find a girl thoroughly covered I'd be interested."
He sauntered away to search, and Cleland edged around the shore of the dancing floor, where the flotsam from the glittering maelstrom in the centre had been cast up.
Threading his way amid god and goddess, nymph and hero, he met and recognized Philip Grayson, one of his youthful masters at school—a tall, handsome figure in Greek armour.
"This is nice, Cleland," he said cordially. "Didn't know you were back. Quite a number of your old school fellows here!"