Part 32

"It's low and degenerate. It's a school of hideousness. Come away!"

"You go sit in another room if you like. I am going to give these fellows a fair chance. Maybe they've got hold of something new."

"There is nothing new about that awful woman with a decayed face. She has been dead for weeks."

"Just put your emotions away, Bambi, and train your mind on this thing. Here is a whole school of men, working in a new medium, along new ideas. They can't all be crazy, you know."

"You like it?"

"Of course I don't like it, but it interests me. I haven't read or heard anything about it, so it is a shock."

"You shall not make for yourselves false images," she said, shaking her head.

"Maybe these maniacs are trying to break up the conventions of Painting and Sculpture. They want more freedom."

"They are anarchists, vandals!"

"Possibly, but if they are necessary to the development of a bigger art expression----"

"They ought to work in secret, and exhibit in the dark."

"No, no! We have to be prepared for it. Our old standards have got to go."

"I feel as medieval as the Professor. I never really understood him before."

"We ought to bring him here."

"I think it would kill him," Bambi answered.

They spent a couple of hours, and then went back to the club. For some reason the Cubists had stirred Jarvis deeply. He divined something new and sincere, where Bambi felt only pose and degeneracy.

"When you think of that awful street, and 'Damaged Goods,' and that exhibit of horrors, all in two days, I don't wonder I feel like an old, old woman," she said.

"Suppose we stay in to-night? There is some kind of special meeting announced here, to discuss the drama. We might go in for a little while."

"All right. But 'early to bed,' for to-morrow we set out on our careers."

"You haven't told me what yours is, yet," he objected.

"Mine is a secret."

The dining-room of the club was entirely full when they went down, and the hum of talk and laughter roused Bambi's tired sensibilities.

"It's quite jolly," she said. "Some of the people look interesting, don't they?"

"I talked to that little man, over there, with the red necktie, while I was waiting for you, and he has ideas."

"Lovely woman with him."

They chatted personalities for a while.

"Seems ages since we left home, doesn't it?"

"Yes. Big mental experiences obliterate time."