witch-burning admission as if she were accounting for the absence of
tea. To his relief she offered him nothing. He had a cigarette between
his fingers, but he did not care to smoke. She continued:--

"For some time I have known you--never mind how! For some time I have
wished to meet you. I am not an impostor, nor do I desire to pose as the
goddess of a new creed. But you, Irving Baldur, are a man among men who
will appreciate what I may show you. You love, you understand, perfumes.
You have even wished for a new art--don't forget that there are others
in the world to whom the seven arts have become a thrice-told tale, to
whom the arts have become too useful. All great art should be useless.
Yet architecture houses us; sculpture flatters us; painting imitates us;
dancing is pure vanity; literature and the drama, mere vehicles for
bread-earning; while music--music, the most useless art as it should
have been--is in the hands of the speculators. Moreover music is too
sexual--it reports in a more intense style the stories of our loves.
Music is the memory of love. What Prophet will enter the temple of the
modern arts and drive away with his divine scourge the vile
money-changers who fatten therein?" Her voice was shrill as she paced
the room. A very sibyl this, her crest of hair agitated, her eyes
sparkling with wrath. He missed the Cumæan tripod.

"There is an art, Baldur, an art that was one of the lost arts of
Babylon until now, one based, as are all the arts, on the senses.
Perfume--the poor, neglected nose must have its revenge. It has outlived
the other senses in the æsthetic field."

"What of the palate--you have forgotten that. Cookery, too, is a fine
art," he ventured. His smile irritated her.