At the poet's third Franco-American Conference that afternoon the room was still vibrating with the echoes of Aphrodite's harp accompaniment to her own singing, and gushing approbation had scarcely ceased, when the poet softly rose and stood with eyes half-closed as though concentrating all the sweetness within him upon the surface of his pursed lips. A wan young man whose face figured only as a by-product of his hair whispered "Hush!" and several people, who seemed to be more or less out of drawing, assumed attitudes which emphasized the faulty draftsmanship. "La Poesie!" breathed the poet; "Kesker say la poesie?" "La poesie--say la vee!" murmured a young woman with profuse teeth. "Wee, wee, say la vee!" cried several people triumphantly. "Nong!" sighed the poet, spraying the hushed air with sweetness, "nong! Say pas le vee; say l'Immortalitay!" After which the poet resumed his seat, and the by-product read, in French verse, "An Appreciation" of the works of Wilhelmina Ganderbury McNutt. And that was the limit of the Franco portion of the Conference; the remainder being plain American. Aphrodite, resting on her tall gilded harp, looked sullenly straight before her. Somebody lighted a Chinese joss-stick, perhaps to kill the aroma of defunct cigarettes. "Verse," said the poet, opening his heavy lids and gazing around him with the lambent-eyed wonder of a newly-wakened ram, "verse is a necklace of tinted sounds strung idly, yet lovingly, upon stray tinseled threads of thought.... Thank you for understanding; thank you." The by-product in the corner of the studio gathered arms and legs into a series of acute angles, and writhed; a lady ornamented with cheek-bones well sketched in, covered her eyes with one hand as though locked in jiu-jitsu with Richard Strauss. Aphrodite's slender fingers, barely resting on the harp-strings, suddenly contracted in a nervous tremor; a low twang echoed the involuntary reflex with a discord. A young man, whose neck was swathed in a stock a la d'Orsay, bent close to her shoulder. "I feel that our souls, blindfolded, are groping toward one another," he whispered. "Don't--don't talk like that!" she breathed almost fiercely; "I am tired--suffocated with sound, drugged with joss-sticks and sandal. I can't stand much more, I warn you." "Are you not well, beloved." "Perfectly well--physically. I don't know what it is--it has come so suddenly--this overwhelming revulsion--this exasperation with scents and sounds.... I could rip out these harp-strings and--and kick that chair over! I--I think I need something--sunlight and the wind blowing my hair loose----" [Illustration: Aphrodite's slender fingers, barely resting on the harp-strings, suddenly contracted in a nervous tremor.] The young man with the stock nodded. "It is the exquisite pagan athirst in you, scorched by the fire of spring. Quench that sweet thirst at the fount beautiful----" "What fount did you say?" she asked dangerously.