Page:Peter Whiffle (1922).djvu/141

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with long pointed breasts. Yorska was there, the exotic Yorska with her long nose, her tragic eyes, her mouth like a crimson slit in a face as white as Pierrot's, a modern Judith looking for a modern Holofernes and never finding him; Jo Davidson with his jovial black beard, Bacchus or satyr in evening clothes; Edna Kenton, in a pale green floating tunic of her own design; Max Eastman, poet and Socialist, and his wife, Ida Rauh; Helen Westley, a tall angular scrag with something of the aristocracy of the Remsen-Meseroles informing her spine, who had acquired a considerable reputation for being "paintable" by never paying the slightest attention to her clothes; Henrietta Rodman, the round-faced, cherubic Max Weber. . . . I caught all these and, quite suddenly, although for some time, I remembered afterward, I had been aware of the odour of Cœur de Jeannette, Clara Barnes. She was sitting, when I discovered her, on a sofa before the fire-place, in which the coals were glowing. She was more matronly in figure and was dressed with some attempt at stylization. She was wearing a robe of batik, iridescent in the shades of the black opal, with a belt of moonstones set in copper, and huge ear-rings fashioned of human hair. On her feet were copper-coloured sandals and I was pleased to note that her dress was long enough to cover her ankles. I leaned over the back of the sofa and addressed her,

Miss Barnes, I believe . . .