She was introduced to a Mr. and Mrs. Gallant, a
dark-faced, cynical-looking man with clever, malicious eyes, and one
of those large cornucopias of women with avid blue stares. The little
dancer was not there. She had "gone to put on nothing," Rosek informed
them.
He took Gyp the round of his treasures, scarabs, Rops drawings,
death-masks, Chinese pictures, and queer old flutes, with an air of
displaying them for the first time to one who could truly appreciate.
And she kept thinking of that saying, "Une technique merveilleuse." Her
instinct apprehended the refined bone-viciousness of this place, where
nothing, save perhaps taste, would be sacred. It was her first glimpse
into that gilt-edged bohemia, whence the generosities, the elans,
the struggles of the true bohemia are as rigidly excluded as from the
spheres where bishops moved. But she talked and smiled; and no one could
have told that her nerves were crisping as if at contact with a corpse.
While showing her those alabaster jars, her host had laid his hand
softly on her wrist, and in taking it away, he let his fingers, with a
touch softer than a kitten's paw, ripple over the skin, then put them
to his lips. Ah, there it was--the--the TECHNIQUE! A desperate desire
to laugh seized her. And he saw it--oh, yes, he saw it! He gave her
one look, passed that same hand over his smooth face, and--behold!--it
showed as before, unmortified, unconscious.
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