In the one-time roadhouse on Washington Square was a saloon the name of which suggested an embryotic impulse toward poetry; or perhaps she picked that particular “pub” at random.  At all events she walked into the bar, put her foot up on the traditional rail and began to converse with the barkeep.

[Illustration:  WASHINGTON SQUARE SOUTH.  The studio quarter.]

She asked him if he had ever seen any of Shakespeare’s plays, and he said no.  She asked him if he would like to see one.  He said sure—­he’d try anything once.  She invited him to go to see “Hamlet” with her, and he said he was game.  Lest his sensitive feelings be hurt by finding himself a humble daw among the peacocks of the rich, gay world, she bought seats in the balcony and wore her shabbiest gown.

When he called for her she felt slightly faint.  He was in evening dress, the most impeccable evening dress conceivable, even to the pumps and the opera hat.  He, too, looked a little shocked when he saw her.  Doubtless he would have asked her to dine at Rector’s first if she had been properly dressed.  They both recovered sufficiently to go to “Hamlet,” and she trembled lest he would not like it.  She need not have worried—­or rather she had more cause to worry than she knew.  Like it?  He loved it; he shouted with honest mirth from first to last.  And, when it was over—­

“Say,” he burst out, “that beats any musical comedy show hollow! It’s the funniest thing I ever see in my life!”

Henceforward that dear lady did not let her theories out in a cold world, but kept them safe in cotton wool under lock and key.

There are fakers in the Village—­just as there are fakers everywhere else.  Only, of course, the ardour of new ideas which sincerely animates the Village does lend itself to all manner of poses.  And because of this a perfectly earnest movement will attract a number of superficial dilettanti who dabble in it until it is in disrepute.  And, vice versa, a crassly artificial fad will, by its novelty and picturesqueness, draw some of the real thinking people.  Such inconsistencies and discrepancies are bound to occur in any such mental crucible as Greenwich.  And, moreover, if the true and the false get a bit mixed once in a way, the wise traveller who goes to learn and not to sit in judgment will not look upon it to the disadvantage or the disparagement of the Village.  Young, fervent and courageous souls may make a vast quantity of mistakes ere they be proved wrong with any sort of sound reasoning.  If our Villagers run off at tangents on occasion, follow a few false gods and tie the cosmos into knots, it is, one may take it, rather to their credit than otherwise.  No one ever accomplished anything by sitting still and looking at a wall.  And it is far better to make a fool of yourself with an intense object, than to make nothing of yourself and have no particular object at all!

There are all sorts of fakers—­conscious or otherwise.  There is the futurist, post-impressionist poseur who more than half believes in his own pose.  Possibly two small incidents may indicate what the genuine Villagers think of him.