He waved his hand with fantastic gesture and raked up his hair.
"That's all very well and very pretty,"--said Cicely, showing her even white teeth in a flashing 'goblin' grin,--"But of course you don't mean a word of it! It's merely a way of talking, such as poets, or men that call themselves poets, affect when the 'fit' is on them. Just a string of words,--mere babble! You'd better write them down, though,--you musn't waste them! Publishers pay for so many words I believe, whether they're sense or nonsense,--please don't lose any halfpence on my account! Do you know you are smiling up at the sky as if you were entirely mad? Ordinary people would say you were,--people to whom dinner is the dearest thing in life would suggest your being locked up. And me, too, I daresay! You haven't answered my question,--why don't you write something about Maryillia?"
"She, too, is not a girl,"--rejoined Adderley--"She is a woman. And she is absolutely unwritable!"
"Too lovely to find expression even in poetry,"--said Cicely, complacently.
"No no!--not that! Not that!" And Adderley gave a kind of serpentine writhe on the grass as he raised himself to a half-sitting posture-- "Gentle Goblin, do not mistake me! When I say that Miss Vancourt is unwritable, I would fain point out that she is above and beyond the reach of my Muse. I cannot 'experience' her! Yes--that is so! What a poet needs most is the flesh model. The flesh model may be Susan, or Sarah, or Jane of the bar and tap-room,--but she must have lips to kiss, hair to touch, form to caress---"
"Saint Moses!" cried Cicely, with an excited wriggle of her long legs--"Must she?"
"She must!" declared Julian, with decision--"Because when you have kissed the lips, you have experienced a 'sensation,' and you can write--'Ah, how sweet the lips I love.' You needn't love them, of course,--you merely try them. She must be amenable and good-natured, and allow herself to be gazed at for an hour or so, till you decide the fateful colour of her eyes. If they are blue, you can paraphrase George Meredith on the 'Blue is the sky, blue is thine eye' system-- if black, you can recall the 'Lovely as the light of a dark eye in woman,' of Byron. She must allow you to freely encircle her waist with an arm, so that having felt the emotion you can write--"How tenderly that yielding form, Thrills to my touch!' And then,--even as a painter who pays so much per hour for studying from the life,-- you can go away and forget her--or you can exaggerate her charms in rhyme, or 'imagine' that she is fairer than Endymion's moon-goddess- -for so long as she serves you thus she is useful,--but once her uses are exhausted, the poet has done with her, and seeks a fresh sample. Hence, as I say, your friend Miss Vancourt is above my clamour for the Beautiful. I must content myself with some humbler type, and 'imagine' the rest!"