Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/145

 Oh! No croaking.

Lysistrata?

That's an idea. You are warmer.

Less blue.

Redder. Oranger. Lysistrata! Perhaps. But I should prefer something more curious. I like B-B-B-Bacon's phrase: There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the p-p-p-proportion. . . . He appeared to ponder. . . I have it! Rachilde's l'Araignée de Cristal.

The Crystal Spider.

Firebird! You understand French.

I seem to foresee this play: cold and perverse.

Blood.

Cold blood.

There's a mother and a boy who is afraid of mirrors. I will play the b-b-boy and you will p-p-p-play the mother.

Frozen blood. No mother for me! Out! What else?

Ronald Firbank's Princess Zoubaroff is perhaps more colorado.

Oh! Firbank.

I hear, hopefully put in Paul, who did not understand Spanish, that he is an indecent writer.

Every alternate line is decent, exclaimed the Duke. A master of wordcraft! He's writing something new—I forget the name—: Mackerel Fishing in the Bois de Boulogne; perhaps that's it—or Cocktails.