“I should say that depended on what one counts with.” But Timothy said it so low that nobody heard him.
“Psychic education——” Michael crumpled his roll thoughtfully. “In the book there’s a woman (Faero’s her name) who is absolutely the most perfect psychic completion you ever encountered. Simply a ripping creation, isn’t she, Doromea?”
“Wonderful!” Doromea sighed admiration; then she smiled, and all her dimples came out, which was to Timothy much more important. “You see, this woman, this Faero, has a way of seeing things—the most subtle, evanescent sort of things that nobody could possibly see——”
“Eh?” Timothy bolted, involuntarily.
“And it’s she who gathers up all the threads of the plot—there really isn’t so much plot, Michael—”
“No, not so much plot——” Michael paused vaguely over a stalk of asparagus. “People are sick of plot nowadays. They want something less apparent, less——”
“So this Faero is a sort of psychic gleaner,” went on Doromea, eagerly. “All the subtleties other people let fall unnoticed she picks up and treasures, until the mental of her, the infinitely fine sensitive perception that’s stretched to the vibration of a thin, thin silken string——”
“Gee whiz! Now ain’t I the late one! Me walkin’-papers ’n’ the cashless mitt’s all I deserve, I guess—but honest, Lady Elinore, if y’ could uv seen that Theatorium show! My word! it had Sothern ’n’ Marlowe lookin’ like two ice-cream freezers—yes’m! Why, when that girl, Phylo-Floretta, jumped out of a forty-six story buildin’, into her waitin’ lover’s arms, with Popper hangin’ out the winder threatenin’ air-ships—my eye! I says to Mamie, I says, this may be riskay, but it’s life, I says! ’N’ y’ c’n take it from me it was, too—oh!” From the window Gladys-Marie became suddenly aware of new audience, and hunted for her vanity-bag to see if her hat was on straight.
“A quaint person,” commented Doromea, when the buttercup hat had passed on, to the tune of The Rosary, “though a trifle hectic in her descriptive parts.”
Michael glanced again triumphantly at Timothy.