Through the open studio door came Dulcie Soane. The Prophet followed at her slender heels, gently waving an urbane tail.
After his first smiling greeting--he always rose, advanced, and took her hand with that pleasant appearance of formality so adored by femininity, youthful or mature--he resumed his seat and continued to write his letters.
These finished, he stamped them, rang for Aristocrates, picked up his palette and brushes, and pulled out the easel upon which was the canvas for the morning.
Dulcie, still in the hands of Selinda, had not yet emerged. The Prophet sat upright on the carved table, motionless as a cat of ebony with green-jewelled eyes.
"Well, old sport," said Barres, stepping across the rug to caress the cat, "you and your pretty mistress begin to look very interesting on my canvas."
The Prophet received the blandishments with dignified gratitude. A discreet and feathery purring filled the room as Barres stroked the jet black, silky fur.
"Fine cat, you are," commented the young man, turning as Dulcie entered.
She laid one hand on his extended arm and sprang lightly to the model stand. And the next moment she was seated--a slim, gemmed thing glimmering with imperial jade from top to toe.
Barres laid the Prophet in her arms, stepped back while Dulcie arranged the docile cat, then retreated to his canvas.
"All right," replied the child happily. And the morning séance was on.
Barres was usually inclined to ramble along conversationally in his pleasant, detached way while at work, particularly if work went well.
"Where were we yesterday, Dulcie? Oh, yes; we were talking about the Victorian era and its art; and we decided that it was not the barren desert that the ultra-moderns would have us believe. That's what we decided, wasn't it?"
"So did you, Dulcie. It was a unanimous decision. Because we both concluded that some among the Victorians were full of that sweet, clean sanity which alone endures. You recollect how our decision started?"
"Yes. It was about my new pleasure in Tennyson, Browning, Morris, Arnold, and Swinburne."
"Exactly. Victorian poets, if sometimes a trifle stilted and self-conscious, wrote nobly; makers of Victorian prose displayed qualities of breadth, imagination and vision and a technical cultivation unsurpassed. The musical compositions of that epoch were melodious and sometimes truly inspired; never brutal, never vulgar, never degenerate. And the Victorian sculptors and painters--at first perhaps austerely pedantic--became, as they should be, recorders of the times and customs of thought, bringing the end of the reign of a great Queen to an admirable renaissance."