METROPOLIS
development of new species of orchids. Their chief task consisted in nothing but, at all times, to appear delightful and to be incapriciollsly cheerful; and, with their bewildering costume, their painted faces, and their eye-masks, surmounted by snow-white wigs and fragrant as Howers, they resembled delicate dolls of porcelain and brocade, devised by master-hand, not pw·chaseable but rather delightful presents. Freder was but a rare visitant to the «Club of the Sons," He preferred his work-shop and the starry chapel in which this organ stood. But when once the desire took him to Bing himself into the radiant joyousness of the stadium competitions he was the most radiant and joyous of all, playing on from victory to victory with the laugh of a young god. On that day too.... on that day too. Still tingling from the icy coolness of falling water, every muscle still quivering in the intoxication of victory he had lain, stretched out, slender, panting, smiling, drunken, beside himself, almost insane with joy. The milk-coloured glass ceiling above the Eternal Gardens was an opal in the light wl.:!ich bathed it, Loving little women attended him, waiting roguishly and jealously, from whose white hands, from whose fine nnger-tips he would eat the fruits he desired. One was standing aside, mixing him a drink. From hip to knee billowed sparkling brocade. S,lender, bare legs held proudly together, slle stood, like ivory, in purple, peaked shoes. Her gleaming body rose, delicately, from her hips and-she was not aware of, it-quivered in the same rhythm as did the man's chest in exhaling his sweet~rising breath. Carefully did the little painted face under the eye-mask watch the work of her careful hands. Her mouth was not rouged, but yet was pomegranate red. And she smiled so unselfconsciously down at the beverage that it caused the other girls to laugh aloud. Infected, Freder also began to laugh. But the glee of the maidens swelled to a. storm as she who was mixing the drink, not knowing why they were laughing, became suffused with a blush of confusion, from her pomegranate-hued mouth to her lustrous hips. The laughter induced the friends, for no
a
12
