shaven, and with the bulging brow and full jaw he was more of the German or Belgian than French.  Black hair thrown off his broad forehead accented this resemblance; a composer rather than a prose-poet and dramatist, was the rapid verdict of Ermentrude.  She was not disappointed, though she had expected a more fragile type.  The weaver of moonshine, of mystic phrases, of sweet gestures and veiled sonorities should not have worn the guise of one who ate three meals a day and slept soundly after his mellow incantations.  Yet she was not—­inheriting, as she did, a modicum of sense from her father—­disappointed.

The conversation did not move more briskly with the entrance of the Keroulans.  The marquis sullenly gossiped with Mr. Sheldam; the princess withdrew herself to the far end of the room with her two painters.  Rajewski was going to a soiree, he informed them, where he would play before a new picture by Carriere, as it was slowly undraped; no one less in rank than a duchess would be present!  A little stiffly, Ermentrude Adams assured the Keroulans of her pleasure in meeting them.  The poet took it as a matter of course, simply, without a suspicion of posed grandeur.  Ermentrude saw this with satisfaction.  If he had clay feet,—­and he must have them; all men do,—­at least he wore his genius with a sense of its responsibility.  She held tightly her hands and leaned back, awaiting the precious moment when the oracle would speak, when this modern magician of art would display his cunning.  But he was fatuously commonplace in his remarks.

“I have often told Madame Keroulan that my successes in Europe do not appeal to me as those in far-away America.  Dear America—­how it must enjoy a breath of real literature!”

Mrs. Sheldam sat up primly, and Ermentrude was vastly amused.  With a flash of fun she replied:—­

“Yes, America does, Monsieur Keroulan.  We have so many Europeans over there now that our standard has fallen off from the days of Emerson and Whitman.  And didn’t America give Europe Poe?” She knew that this boast had the ring of the amateur, but it pleased her to see how it startled him.

“America is the Great Bribe,” he pursued.  “You have no artists in New York.”

“Nor have we New Yorkers,” the girl retorted.  “The original writing natives live in Europe.”

He looked puzzled, but did not stop.  “You have depressed literature to the point of publication,” he solemnly asserted.  This was too much and she laughed in mockery.  Husband and wife joined her, while Mrs. Sheldam trembled at the audacity of her niece—­whose irony was as much lost on her as it was on the poet.

“But you publish plays and books, do you not?” Ermentrude naively asked.

Madame Keroulan interposed in icy tones:—­

“Mademoiselle Adams misunderstands.  Monsieur Keroulan is the Grand Disdainer.  Like his bosom friend, Monsieur Mallarme, he cares little for the Philistine public—­”