Praed, he hurried off at the first opportunity to Praed's studio.
Praed was entertaining a large party of young men and women to tea
and the exhibition of some wild futurist drawings and a few rather
striking designs for stage scenery and book covers. David had
perforce to keep his questions bottled up and take part in the
rather vapid conversation that was going on between young men with
_glabre_ faces and high-pitched voices and women with rather wild
eyes.
[It struck David about this time that women were getting a little
out of hand, strained, over-inclined to laugh mirthless laughter,
greedy for sensuality, sensation, sincerity, sweetmeats. Something.
Even if they satisfied some fleeting passion or jealousy by
marrying, they soon wanted to be de-married, separated, divorced, to
don male costume, to go on the amateur stage and act Salome parts on
Sunday afternoons that most ladies of the real Stage had refused;
while the men that went about with them in these troops from
restaurant to restaurant, studio to studio, music hall to cafe
chantant, Brighton to Monte Carlo, Sandown to Goodwood, were shifty,
too well-dressed, too near neutrality in sex, without defined
professions, known by nicknames only, spend-thrifts, spongers,
bankrupts, and collectors of needless bric-a-brac.]
However this mob at last quitted Praddy's premises and he and David
were left alone.
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