eighteen years who was noisily busy piling dishes from a table on to a tray.—“Isn’t he a sweet person, Frank?” he went on with an evil, jeering mimicry—“and there’s something very grand and enormously moving about the way he piles those dishes on a tray,” he continued with a deliberate parody of Starwick’s mannered accent. “—I mean, the whole thing’s there—it really is, you know—it’s like that painting by Cimabue in the Louvre that we both like so much—you know the one of the Madonna with the little madonnas all around her.—I mean the way he uses his hands—Look!” he crooned rapturously as the bus-boy took a thick, blunt finger and vigorously wiped his rheumy nose with it. “—Now where, where, Frank,” he said ecstatically, “could you find anything like that in America? I mean, the grace, the dignity, the complete unselfconsciousness with which that boy just wiped his nose across his finger—or his finger across his nose—Hah! hah! hah!—I get all confused, Frank—really!—the movement is so beautiful and fluid—it’s hard to say just which is which—which does the wiping—nose or finger—I mean, the whole thing’s quite incredible—and most astonishing—the way it comes back on itself: it’s like a fugue, you know,” and looking at the other earnestly, he said deeply: “You see what I mean, don’t you?”
Starwick’s face had flamed crimson during the course of this jeering parody: he returned the other’s look with hard eyes, and said with cold succinctness:
“Quite!… If you don’t mind, could we go along now and,”—his flush deepened and he concluded with painful difficulty, “… and… and do what you said you would?”
“But of course!” the other cried, with another parody of Starwick’s tone and manner. “At once! Immediately! Tout de suite!… as we say over here!… Now, there you are!” he said enthusiastically. “There you are, Frank!… Tout de suite!” he murmured rapturously. “Tout de suite!… Not’at once!’Not’right away!’Not’immediately!’But tout de suite!… Ah, Frank, how different from our own coarse tongue! Quel charme! Quelle musique! Quelle originalité!… I mean, the whole thing’s there!… It really is, you know!”
“Quite!” said Starwick as before, and looked at him with hard, embittered eyes. “Could we go now?”
“Mais oui, mais oui, mon ami!… But first, I want you to meet yon noble youth who wipes his nose with such a simple unaffected dignity, and is, withal, so French about it!… I know him well, we artists have the common touch, n’est-ce pas? Many a time and oft have we talked together….
