"_Brightness falls from the air;_ _Queens have died young and fair;_ _Dust hath closed Helen's eye._"
And she ceased and sat down. There was a silence.
Edward Henry in the gloom caught Mr. Seven Sachs's unalterable observant smile across the table.
Edward Henry had felt a tremor at the vibrations of Rose Euclid's voice. But the words she uttered had set up no clear image in his mind, unless it might be of some solid body falling from the air, or of a young woman named Helen walking along Trafalgar Road, Bursley, on a dusty day, and getting the dust in her eyes. He knew not what to answer.
"Is that all there is of it?" he asked at length.
"It's from Thomas Nashe's 'Song in Time of Pestilence.' The closing lines of the verse are:
"_I am sick, I must die--_ _Lord, have mercy on me!_"
"Well," said Edward Henry, recovering, "I rather like the end. I think the end's very appropriate."
Mr. Seven Sachs choked over his wine, and kept on choking.
Mr. Marrier was the first to recover from this blow to the prestige of poetry. Or perhaps it would be more honest to say that Mr. Marrier had suffered no inconvenience from the contretemps. His apparent gleeful zest in life had not been impaired. He was a born optimist, of an extreme type unknown beyond the circumferences of theatrical circles.
"I _say_," he emphasised, "I've got an ideah. We ought to be photographed like that. Do you no end of good." He glanced encouragingly at Rose Euclid. "Don't you see it in the illustrated papers? 'A prayvate supper-party at Wilkins's Hotel. Miss Ra-ose Euclid reciting verse at a discussion of the plans for her new theatre in Piccadilly Circus. The figures reading from left to right are: Mr. Seven Sachs, the famous actor-author; Miss Rose Euclid; Mr. Carlo Trent, the celebrated dramatic poet; Mr. Alderman Machin, the well-known Midlands capitalist,' and so on!" Mr. Marrier repeated, "and so on."
"It's a notion," said Rose Euclid dreamily.
"But how _can_ we be photographed?" Carlo Trent demanded with irritation.
"In ten minutes. I know a photographer in Brook Street."
"Would he come at once?" Carlo Trent frowned at his watch.
"Rather!" Mr. Marrier gaily soothed him, as he went over to the telephone. And Mr. Marrier's bright boyish face radiated forth the assurance that nothing in all his existence had more completely filled him with sincere joy than this enterprise of procuring a photograph of the party. Even in giving the photographer's number,--he was one of those prodigies who remember infallibly all telephone numbers,--his voice seemed to gloat upon his project.