Campaspe and the Duke were old friends, and they talked of Capri, from whence the Duke had recently emerged, the new English plays, the best of which, the Duke appeared to believe, were by Beaumont and Fletcher, Poiret's inventions for the grues at Auteuil, Cocteau's café, Le Bœuf sur le Toit, and kindred subjects. He was a charming and engaging conversationalist, and the most winning quality of his manner was its utter frankness and apparent absence of guile. Harold had been fully prepared, by advance reports, to meet an ironic epigrammatist, who perhaps removed his coat in public to inject a shot of morphia into his arm. The Duke seemed free from a mania for exhibitionism. Not only was he delightful to Harold, he was equally at his ease with Paul, and he had bestowed upon Zimbule, whom he playfully described as a sciurine oread, the accolade of his particular interest. He had made her his friend at once by promising to present her with a long string of coral beads of the valuable and rare colour of the berries of wintergreen.
At their first meeting, she had challenged his monocle.
What'd you do if it dropped and broke? she asked.
For answer, the Duke relaxed the muscles around his eye, and the glass fell to the floor, shivering into fragments. Immediately, he took another glass from his waistcoat pocket, and adjusted it.
