'Oh, why?'
'Because,' Madame Ruiz
repressed a yawn, 'because, my dear, I feel armchairish.'
With a kiss of the
finger-tips (decidedly distinguished hands had Vittorio Ruiz), he turned away.
Joying frankly in
excess, the fiery noontide hour had a special charm for him.
It was the hour, to be sure, of 'the Faun!'
'Aho, Ahi, Aha!' he
carolled, descending half trippingly a few white winding stairs that brought
him upon a fountain. Palms, with their floating fronds radiating light, stood
all around.
It was here 'the
creative mood' would sometimes take him, for he possessed no small measure of
talent of his own.
His Three Hodeidahs,
and Five Phallic Dances for Pianoforte and Orchestra, otherwise known as
'Suite in Green,' had taken the whole concert world by storm, and, now, growing
more audacious, he was engaged upon an opera to be known, by and by, as Sumaïa.
'Ah Atthis, it was
Sappho who told me--' tentatively he sought an air.
'Ah Atthis--' One must
make the girl feel that her little secret is out...; quiz her; but let her
know, and pretty plainly, that the Poetess had been talking...
'Ah Atthis--'
But somehow or other the lyric mood to-day
was obdurate and not to be persuaded.
'I blame the oysters! After
oysters--' he murmured, turning about to ascertain what was exciting the dogs.
She was coming up the drive with her face
to the sun, her body shielded behind a spreading bouquet of circumstance.
From: Ronald Firbank, Sorrow In Sunlight, 1924.
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