The hoboe, sprawling, scratches in the sun;
While ’round and ’round the happy mongrels run.”

“Good Heavens,” breathed Neville, “that sort of thing may be modern and strong, but it’s too rank for me, Valerie.  Shall we bolt?”

“I—­I think we’d better,” she said miserably.  “I don’t think I care for—­for these interesting people very much.”

They rose and passed slowly along the walls of the room, which were hung with “five-minute sketches,” which probably took five seconds to conceive and five hours to execute—­here an unclothed woman, chiefly remarkable for an extraordinary development of adipose tissue and house-maid’s knee; here a pathological gem that might have aptly illustrated a work on malformations; yonder a dashing dab of balderdash, and next it one of Rackin’s masterpieces, flanked by a gem of Stanley Pooks.

In the centre of the room, emerging from a chunk of marble, the back and neck and one ear of an unclothed lady protruded; and the sculptured achievement was labelled, “Beatrice Andante.”

“Oh, Lord,” whispered Neville, repressing a violent desire to laugh.  “Beatrice and Aunty!  I didn’t know he had one.”

“Is it Dante’s Beatrice, Kelly?  Where is Dante and his Aunty?”

“God knows.  They made a mess of it anyway, those two—­andante—­which I suppose this mess in marble symbolises.  Pity he didn’t have an aunty to tell him how.”

“Louis!  How irreverent!” she whispered, eyes sparkling with laughter.

“Shall I try a five-minute fashionable impromptu, dear?” he asked: 

  “If Dante’d had an Aunty
  Who ante-dated Dante
  And scolded him
  And tolded him
  The way to win a winner,
  It’s a cinch or I’m a sinner,
  He’d have taken Trix to dinner,
  He’d have given her the eye
  Of the fish about to die,
  And folded her,
  And moulded her
  Like dough within a pie—­
  sallow, pallid pie—­
  And cooked a scheme to marry her,
  And hired a hack to carry her
  To stately Harlem-by-the-Bronx,
  Where now the lonely taxi honks—­”

“Kelly!” she gasped.

They both were laughing so that they hastened their steps, fearful of offending, and barely contrived to compose their features when making their adieux to Mrs. Hind-Willet and the Countess d’Enver.

As they walked east along Fifty-ninth Street, breathing in the fresh, sparkling evening air, she said impulsively: 

“And to think, Louis, that if I had been wicked enough to marry you I’d have driven you into that kind of society—­or into something genetically similar!”

His face sobered: 

“You could hold your own in any society.”

“Perhaps I could.  But they wouldn’t let me.”

“Are you afraid to fight it out?”

“Yes, dear—­at your expense.  Otherwise—­” She gazed smilingly into space, a slight colour in either cheek.