Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/127

Rh hair, smoothed the soft flow of his moustache and beard, knotted the rope cord round his waist, and stood there only a second or two longer. Then, nerved by the startling simplicity, the convincing faithfulness of his whole appearance, he opened the door and went down the passage to the studio, frowning and stepping gingerly on the cold boards.

The curious murmur of sounds that struck his ear; voices, the music of glasses and silver, the slap, as it might have been a hand upon a cheek, and the vagrant notes of some untuned musical instrument—these all he barely noticed, or supposed they came from the sculptor's adjacent studio.

He opened the door and brushed aside the dark portière that screened out draughts; he stepped into the studio, into a hot, overcharged air, thick with the flat smell of poured wines and fruit rind, coloured with smoke, poisoned with scent, ringing harshly to voices—an air that of itself, and if he had seen nothing, would have nauseated him.

He saw dimly, confusedly; orange and yellow blobs of light seemed to be swinging behind grey-blue mists that rolled and eddied round the heads of people so wild, he did not know if he looked at a dream-picture, a picture in a bad dream. If he made another step or two and stood, his arms straight at his sides, his head up, his long eyes glaring beneath drawn perplexed brows, he did not know it. There was a sudden pause, as though by a chemical process the air had been purged of sounds. Then a confused yell burst from among the smoke clouds, mixed with the harsh scrape of chairs shot back upon the floor; that, too, ceased, and out of the frozen horror of those halted people, some incoherent, hysteric whimpering broke out, and a few faint interrupted exclamations.

At a table heaped with the débris of a careless feast he saw