"I do _not_! Honestly, Miss Winslow, I think it would be a good stunt to get along without any art at all for a generation, and see what we miss. We probably need dance music, but I doubt if we need opera. Funny how the world always praises its opera-singers so much and pays 'em so well and then starves its shoemakers, and yet it needs good shoes so much more than it needs opera--or war or fiction. I'd like to see all the shoemakers get together and refuse to make any more shoes till people promised to write reviews about them, like all these book-reviews. Then just as soon as people's shoes began to wear out they'd come right around, and you'd read about the new masterpieces of Mr. Regal and Mr. Walkover and Mr. Stetson." "Yes! I can imagine it. 'This laced boot is one of the most vital and gripping and wholesome shoes of the season.' And probably all the young shoemakers would sit around cafés, looking quizzical and artistic. But don't you think your theory is dangerous, Mr. Ericson? You give me an excuse for being content with being a commonplace Upper-West-Sider. And aren't authors better than commonplaceness? You're so serious that I almost suspect you of having started to be an author yourself." "Really not. As a matter of fact, I'm the kiddy in patched overalls you used to play with when you kept house in the willows." "Oh, of course! In the Forest of Arden! And you had a toad that you traded for my hair-ribbon." "And we ate bread and milk out of blue bowls!" "Oh yes!" she agreed, "blue bowls with bunny-rabbits painted on them." "And giants and a six-cylinder castle, with warders and a donjon keep. And Jack the Giant-killer. But certainly bunnies." "Do you really like bunnies?" Her voice caressed the word. "I like them so much that when I think of them I know that there's one thing worse than having a cut-rate literary salon, and that's to be too respectable----" "Too Upper-West-Side!" "----to dare to eat bread and milk out of blue bowls." "Yes, I think I shall have to admit you to the Blue Bowl League, Mr. Ericson. Speaking of which----Tell me, who did introduce us, you and me? I feel so apologetic for not remembering." "Mayn't I be a mystery, Miss Winslow? At least as long as I have this new shirt, which you observed with some approval while I was drooling on about authors? It makes me look like a count, you must admit. Or maybe like a Knight of the Order of the Bunny Rabbit. Please let me be a mystery still." "Yes, you may. Life has no mysteries left except Olive's coiffure and your beautiful shirt.... Does one talk about shirts at a second meeting?" "Apparently one does." "Yes.... To-night, I _must_ have a mystery.... Do you swear, as a man of honor, that you are at this party dishonorably, uninvited?" "I do, princess." "Well, so am I! Olive was invited to come, with a man, but he was called away and she dragged me here, promising me I should see----" "Anarchists?"