mentally plump
on my knees and say to you that Ellenora Vibert is unlike any woman I
ever met." Ellenora half rose from the table, looking sarcastically at
him.

"My dear Mr. Goddard, don't make fun. You have hurt me more than I dare
tell you. I fancied that you were a friend, the true sort." She was all
steel and glitter now. Paul openly admired her.

"Mrs. Vibert, I beg your pardon. Please forget what I said. I do enjoy
your companionship, and you know I am not a lady-killer. Tell me that
you forgive me, and we will talk about that lovely line you quoted
from--?"

"Coventry Patmore, a dead poet. He it was that spoke of Wagner as a
musical impostor, and of the grinning woman in every canvas of Leonardo
da Vinci. I enjoy his 'Angel in the House' so much, because it shows me
the sort of a woman I am not and the sort of a woman we modern women are
trying to outlive.... Yes, 'the bright disorder of the stars is solved
by music,' he sings; and I remember reading somewhere in Henry James
that music is a solvent. But it's false--false in my case. Mr. Vibert
is, as you know, a talented young man. Well, his music bores me. He is
said to have genius, yet his music never sounds as if it had any fire in
it; it is as cold as salt. Why should I be solved by his music?"

Ellenora upset her glass and laughed. Paul joined in at a respectful
pace. The woman was beyond him. He gave her a long glance and she
returned it, but not ardently; only curiosity was in her insistent gaze.

"Ah! Youth is an alley ambuscaded by stars," he proclaimed. The phrase
had cost him midnight labor.

"Don't try to be epigrammatic," she retorted, "it doesn't suit your
mental complexion. I'll be glad, then, when my youth has passed. It's a
time of turmoil during which one can't really think clearly. Give me
cool old age."

"And the future?"

"I leave that to the licensed victuallers of eternity." Paul experienced
a thrill. The woman's audacity was boundless. Did she believe in
anything?...

"I wonder why your husband does not give you the love he puts into his
music."

"He has not suffered enough yet. You know what George Moore says about
the 'sadness of life being the joy of art!' ... Besides, Arthur is only
half a man if he can't give it to both. Where is your masculine
objectivity, then?" she retorted.

"Lord, what a woman! 'Masculine objectivity,' and I suppose 'feminine
subjectivity' too. I never met such a blue-stocking. Do you remember how