Then, close to him, a girl spoke of the “purple perfume of petunias,” and a man used the phrases, “body politic,” and “the gaiety of nations.”

So he knew he was among the elect, redundant, and truly precious.  A chinless young man turned to him and said: 

“There is nobody to-day who writes as Bernard Haw writes.”

“Does anybody want to?” asked Hamil pleasantly.

“You mean that this is an age of trumpery romance?” demanded a heavy gentleman in dull disdain.  “William Dean has erased all romance from modern life with one smear of his honest thumb!”

“The honest thumb that persistently and patiently rubs the scales from sapphire and golden wings in order to be certain that the vination of the Ornithoptera is still underneath, is not the digit of inspiration,” suggested Hamil.

The disciple turned a dull brick-colour; but he betrayed neither his master nor himself.

“What, in God’s name,” he asked heavily, “is an ornithoptera?”

A very thin author, who had been listening and twisting himself into a number of shapes, thrust his neck forward into the arena and considered Hamil with the pale grimace of challenge.

“Henry Haynes?” he inquired—­“your appreciation in one phrase, Mr. Hamil.”

“In a Henry Haynes phrase?” asked Hamil good-humouredly.

“The same old calumny?” said the thin author, writhing almost off his chair.

“I’m afraid so; and the remedy a daily dose of verbifuge—­until he gets back to the suffocated fount of inspiration.  I am very sorry if I seem to differ from everybody, but everybody seems to differ from me, so I can’t help it.”

A Swami, unctuous and fat, and furious at the lack of feminine attention, said something suavely outrageous about modern women.  He was immediately surrounded by several mature examples who adored to be safely smitten by the gelatinous and esoteric.

A little flabby, featureless, but very fashionable portrait painter muttered to Hamil:  “Orient and Occident! the molluskular and the muscular.  Mr. Hamil, do you realise what the Occident is?”

“Geographically?” inquired Hamil wearily.

“No, symbolically.  It is that!” explained the painter, doubling his meagre biceps and punching at the infinite, with a flattened thumb.  “That,” he repeated, “is America.  Do you comprehend?”

The wan young girl who had spoken of the purple perfume of petunias said that she understood.  It may be that she did; she reviewed literature for the Tribune.

Harried and restless, Hamil looked for Shiela and saw Portlaw, very hot and uncomfortable in his best raiment, shooting his cuffs and looking dully about for some avenue of escape; and Hamil, exasperated with purple perfumes and thumbs, meanly snared him and left him to confront a rather ample and demonstrative young girl who believed that all human thought was precious—­even sinful thought—­of which she knew as much as a newly hatched caterpillar.  However, Portlaw was able to enlighten her if he cared to.