_ CHAPTER XIII
At the poet's third Franco-American Conference that afternoon the room was still vibrating with the echoes of Aphrodite's harp accompaniment to her own singing, and gushing approbation had scarcely ceased, when the poet softly rose and stood with eyes half-closed as though concentrating all the sweetness within him upon the surface of his pursed lips.
A wan young man whose face figured only as a by-product of his hair whispered "Hush!" and several people, who seemed to be more or less out of drawing, assumed attitudes which emphasized the faulty draftsmanship.
"La Poesie!" breathed the poet; "Kesker say la poesie?"
"La poesie--say la vee!" murmured a young woman with profuse teeth.
"Wee, wee, say la vee!" cried several people triumphantly.
"Nong!" sighed the poet, spraying the hushed air with sweetness, "nong! Say pas le vee; say l'Immortalitay!"
After which the poet resumed his seat, and the by-product read, in French verse, "An Appreciation" of the works of Wilhelmina Ganderbury McNutt.
And that was the limit of the Franco portion of the Conference; the remainder being plain American.
Aphrodite, resting on her tall gilded harp, looked sullenly straight before her. Somebody lighted a Chinese joss-stick, perhaps to kill the aroma of defunct cigarettes.
"Verse," said the poet, opening his heavy lids and gazing around him with the lambent-eyed wonder of a newly-wakened ram, "verse is a necklace of tinted sounds strung idly, yet lovingly, upon stray tinseled threads of thought.... Thank you for understanding; thank you."
The by-product in the corner of the studio gathered arms and legs into a series of acute angles, and writhed; a lady ornamented with cheek-bones well sketched in, covered her eyes with one hand as though locked in jiu-jitsu with Richard Strauss.
Aphrodite's slender fingers, barely resting on the harp-strings, suddenly contracted in a nervous tremor; a low twang echoed the involuntary reflex with a discord.
A young man, whose neck was swathed in a stock a la d'Orsay, bent close to her shoulder.
"I feel that our souls, blindfolded, are groping toward one another," he whispered.
"Don't--don't talk like that!" she breathed almost fiercely; "I am tired--suffocated with sound, drugged with joss-sticks and sandal. I can't stand much more, I warn you."
"Are you not well, beloved."
"Perfectly well--physically. I don't know what it is--it has come so suddenly--this overwhelming revulsion--this exasperation with scents and sounds.... I could rip out these harp-strings and--and kick that chair over! I--I think I need something--sunlight and the wind blowing my hair loose----"
The young man with the stock nodded. "It is the exquisite pagan athirst in you, scorched by the fire of spring. Quench that sweet thirst at the fount beautiful----"
"What fount did you say?" she asked dangerously.
"The precious fount of verse, dear maid."
"No!" she whispered violently. "I'm half drowned already. Words, smells, sounds, attitudes, rocking-chairs--and candles profaning the sunshine--I am suffocated, I need more air, more sense and less incense--less sound, less art----"
"Less--_what_?" he gasped.
"Less art!--what you call 'l'arr'!--yes, I've said it; I'm sick! sick of art! I know what I require now." And as he remained agape in shocked silence: "I don't mean to be rude, Mr. Frawley, but I also require less of you.... So much less that father will scarcely expect me to play any more accompaniments to your 'necklaces of precious tones'--so much less that the minimum of my interest in you vanishes to absolute negation.... So I shall not marry you."
"Aphrodite--are--are you mad?"
Her sulky red mouth was mute.
Meanwhile the poet's rich, resonant voice filled the studio with an agreeable and rambling monotone:
"Verse is a vehicle for expression; expression is a vehicle for verse; sound, in itself, is so subtly saturated with meaning that it requires nothing of added logic for its vindication. Sound, therefore, is sense, modified by the mysterious portent of tone. Thank you for understanding, thank you for a thought--very, very precious, a thought beautiful."
He smeared the air with inverted thumb and smiled at Mr. Frawley, who rose, somewhat agitated, and, crooking one lank arm behind his back, made a mechanical pinch at an atmospheric atom.
"If--if you do that again--if you dare to recite those verses about me, I shall go! I tell you I can't stand any more," breathed Aphrodite between her clenched teeth.
The young man cast his large and rather sickly eyes upon her. For a moment he was in doubt, but belief in the witchery of sound prevailed, for he had yet to meet a being insensible to the "music of the soul," and so with a fond and fatuous murmur he pinched the martyred atmosphere once more, and began, mousily:
ALL
A tear a year
My pale desire requires,
And that is all.
Enlacements weary, passion tires,
Kisses are cinder-ghosts of fires
Smothered at birth with mortal earth;
And that is all.
A year of fear
My pallid soul desires
And that is all--
Terror of bliss and dread of happiness,
A subtle need of sorrow and distress
And you to weep one tear, no more, no less,
And that is all I ask--
And that is all.
People were breathing thickly; the poet unaffectedly distilled the suggested tear; it was a fat tear; it ran smoothly down his nose, twinkled, trembled, and fell.
Aphrodite's features had become tense; she half rose, hesitated. Then, as the young man in the stock turned his invalid's eyes in her direction and began:
Oh, sixteen tears
In sixteen years----
she transfixed her hat with one nervous gesture sprang to her feet, turned, and vanished through the door.
"She is too young to endure it," sobbed the by-product to her of the sketchy face. And that was no idle epigram, either. _