The clock therefore was still going but had ceased to strike.
Mr. Prohack at once drank two glasses of champagne at the buffet, while
Sir Paul had the customary whiskey.
"I say, old thing, I say!" Sir Paul protested.
"_I shall sleep!_" said Mr. Prohack in a loud, gay, triumphant voice. He
was a new man.
* * * * *
The reception now seemed to him far more superb than ever. It was almost
at its apogee. All the gilt chairs were occupied; all the couches and
fauteuils of the room were occupied, and certain delicious toilettes
were even spread on rugs or on the bare, reflecting floors. On every
hand could be heard artistic discussions, serious and informed and yet
lightsome in tone. If it was not the real originality of jazz music that
was being discussed, it was the sureness of the natural untaught taste
of the denizens of the East End and South London, and if not that then
the greatness of male revue artistes, and if not that then the need of a
national theatre and of a minister of fine arts, and if not that then
the sculptural quality of the best novels and the fictional quality of
the best sculpture, and if not that then the influence on British life
of the fox-trot, and if not that then the prospects of bringing modern
poets home to the largest public by means of the board schools, and if
not that then the evil effects of the twin great London institutions for
teaching music upon the individualities of the young geniuses entrusted
to them, and if not that the part played by the most earnest amateurs in
the destruction of opera, and if not that the total eclipse of
Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner since the efflorescence of the Russian
Ballet.
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