"Once," she said, "I knew a poet who emitted such precious thoughts. He was the funniest thing; he had the round, pale, ancient eyes of an African parrot, a pasty countenance, and a derby hat resting on top of a great bunch of colourless curly hair. And that's the way _he_ talked, Mr. Desboro!"
He seated himself on the other arm of the sofa:
"At first. He was a celebrity. He did write some pretty things."
"That he came out of his trance and made love to you."
"How did you know? Wasn't it dreadful! And he'd always told me that he had never experienced an emotion except when adoring the moon. He was a very dreadful young man--perfectly horrid in his ideas--and I sent him about his business very quickly; and I remember being a little frightened and watching him from the window as he walked off down the street in his soiled drab overcoat and the derby hat on his frizzly hair, and his trousers too high on his ankles----"
Desboro was so immensely amused at the picture she drew that her pretty brows unbent and she smiled, too.
"I didn't fully understand at the time----" she hesitated, then, with an angry blush: "He asked me to go to Italy with him. And he said he couldn't marry me because he had already espoused the moon!"
Desboro's laughter rang through the old library; and Jacqueline was not quite certain whether she liked the way he took the matter or not.
"I know him," said Desboro. "I've seen him about town kissing women's hands, in company with a larger and fatter one. Isn't his name Munger?"
"Certainly. And the fat one's name is Waudle. They were a hot team at fashionable literary stunts--the Back Alley Club, you know."
"Oh, it's just silly; a number of fashionable and wealthy young men and women pin on aprons, now and then, and paint and model lumps of wet clay in several severely bare studios over some unfragrant stables. They proudly call it The Back Alley Club."
"Because it isn't the real thing. It's a strutting ground for things like Munger and Waudle, and all the rag-tag that is always sniffing and snuffling at the back doors of the fine arts."
He said, good-humouredly: "Yes, and I don't even do that. Is that what you mean?"
She considered him: "Haven't you any profession?"