ewlaps quivered with stored emotion, and the spellbound audience
breathed as people breathe when the hostess at table attempts to smooth
over a bad break by her husband.

"Is _that_ life?" whispered Cybele to Lethbridge, her sensitive mouth
aquiver. "Did the author actually know such people? Do _you_? Is
conscience really only an attitude? Is instinct the only guide? Am
_I_--really--bad----"

"No, no," whispered Lethbridge; "all that is only a dramatist's
attitude. Don't--don't look grieved! Why, every now and then some man
discovers he can attract more attention by standing on his head. That is
all--really, that is all. Barnard Haw on his feet is not amusing; but
the same gentleman on his head is worth an orchestra-chair. When a man
wears his trousers where other men wear their coats, people are bound to
turn around. It is not a new trick. Mystes, the Argive comic poet, and
the White Queen, taught this author the value of substituting 'is' for
'is not,' until, from standing so long inverted, he himself forgets what
he means, and at this point the eminent brothers Rogers take up the
important work.... Please, please, Cybele, _don't_ take it seriously!...
If you look that way--if you are unhappy, I--I----"

A gentle snore from the poet transfixed the firing-line, but the snore
woke up the poet and he mechanically pinched an atom out of the
atmosphere, blinking at the stage.

"Precious--very, very precious," he murmured drowsily. "Thank you--thank
everybody--" And he sank into an obese and noiseless slumber as the gray
and silver curtain slowly fell. The applause, far from rousing him,
merely soothed him; a honeyed smile hovered on his lips which formed the
words "Thank you." That was all; the firing-line stirred, breathed
deeply, and folded twelve soft white hands. Chlorippe, twelve, and
Philodice, thirteen, yawned, pink-mouthed, sleepy-eyed; Dione, fourteen,
laid her golden head on the shoulder of Aphrodite, fifteen.

The finger-tips of Lissa and Harrow still touched, scarcely clinging;
they had turned toward one another when the curtain fell. But the play,
to them, had been a pantomime of silhouettes, the stage, a void edged
with flame--the scene, the audience, the theater, the poet himself as
unreal and meaningless as the shadowy attitudes of the shapes that
vanished when the phantom curtain closed its folds.

And through the subdued light, turning noiselessly, they peered at one
another, conscious that naught e