“I quite agree. I wish you would tell that to your friend Pope,” said the Countess von Happel who, with another woman, crowded into our little recess. Hopestill introduced me to the large, fragrant Viennese and to the other, Mrs. Choate. The Countess, speaking to her friend and to me, explained, “Pope is a surrealist, ladies, but I call him a fool. Hope, he brought me a gouache called ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’ though it was just a great gray study of nothing at all. If you turned it upside down, you got a sort of feeling that a goose was squatting on a picket fence. I asked him why on earth he had picked the title and he said that the rhythm matched the ‘color cadences’ but, my dears, there was no color in it!” Fashionably dressed and set with colossal jewels, the Countess reached across to squeeze Hope’s hand and with an equine laugh cried, “Admit it’s a damned fraud.”

“Oh, Berthe, don’t let’s have that all over again. You know I’m quite able to see the virtue of your Davids and Rembrandts and Bellinis. You just judge them and modern painting on different psychological levels.”

“That’s the fraud! Psychological levels indeed! But, darling, let me tell you the rest of the story about Mr. Pope. He came to my last Friday wearing bathing trunks, galoshes, a figured waistcoat and an enormous tam-o’-shanter. Naturally we ignored him. We’re not amused by such clowns, at least not in a small music room.”

“He was pulling your leg,” said Hope.

“Well, my soul, don’t you suppose I knew that? But he got no satisfaction out of his performance and he’s ruined himself so far as I’m concerned. I shouldn’t dream of letting him come again. Annaliese Speyer was quite faint when she saw him. Really, she was! I had to send for aromatics.”