Mike was about to begin a series of articles in this genial journal, entitled Lions of the Season.  His first lion was a young man who had invented a pantomime, Pierrot murders his Wife, which he was acting with success in fashionable drawing-rooms.  A mute brings Pierrot back more dead than alive from the cemetery, and throws him in a chair.  When Pierrot recovers he re-acts the murder before a portrait of his wife—­how he tied her down and tickled her to death.  Then he begins drinking, and finally sets fire to the curtains of the bed and is burnt.

It was the day before publishing day, and since breakfast the young men had been drinking, smoking, telling tales, and writing paragraphs; from time to time the page-boy brought in proofs, and the narrators made pause till he had left the room.  Frank continued reading Mike’s manuscript, now and then stopping to praise a felicitous epithet.

At last he said—­“Harding, what do you think of this?—­’The Sphynx is representative of the grave and monumental genius of Egypt, the Faun of the gracious genius of Rome, the Pierrot of the fantastic genius of the Renaissance.  And, in this one creation, I am not sure that the seventeenth does not take the palm from the earlier centuries.  Pierrot!—­there is music, there is poetry in the name.  The soul of an epoch lives in that name, evocative as it is of shadowy trees, lawny spaces, brocade, pointed bodices, high heels and guitars.  And in expression how much more perfect is he than his ancestor, the Faun!  His animality is indicated without coarse or awkward symbolism; without cloven hoof or hirsute ears—­only a white face, a long white dress with large white buttons, and a black skull-cap; and yet, somehow, the effect is achieved.  The great white creature is not quite human—­hereditary sin has not descended upon him; he is not quite responsible for his acts.’”

“I like the paragraph,” said Harding; “you finish up, of course, with the apotheosis of pantomimists, and announce him as one of the lions of the season.  Who are your other lions and lionesses?”

“The others will be far better,” said Mike.  He took a cigarette from a silver box on the table, and, speaking as he puffed at it, entered into the explanation of his ideas.

Mademoiselle D’Or, the premiere danseuse who had just arrived from Vienna, was to be the lioness of next week.  Mike told how he would translate into words the insidious poetry of the blossom-like skirt that the pink body pierces like a stem, the beautiful springing, the lifted arms, then the flight from the wings; the posturing, the artificial smiles; this art a survival of Oriental tradition; this art at once so carnal and so enthusiastically ideal.  “A prize-fighter will follow the danseuse.  And I shall gloat in Gautier-like cadence—­if I can catch it—­over each superb muscle and each splendid development.  But my best article will be on Kitty Carew.  Since Laura Bell and Mabel Grey our courtesans have been but a mediocre lot.”