Their colours were plain. Their shapes were plain.
Everything was plain except the meaning."
Inglewood was about to open his mouth in an amiable protest, but Moon
went on, plunging quicker and quicker up and down the garden and smoking
faster and faster. "Dances, too," he said; "dances were not frivolous.
Dances were harder to understand than inscriptions and texts.
The old dances were stiff, ceremonial, highly coloured but silent.
Have you noticed anything odd about Smith?"
"Well, really," cried Inglewood, left behind in a collapse of humour,
"have I noticed anything else?"
"Have you noticed this about him," asked Moon, with unshaken persistency,
"that he has done so much and said so little? When first he came he talked,
but in a gasping, irregular sort of way, as if he wasn't used to it.
All he really did was actions--painting red flowers on black gowns or throwing
yellow bags on to the grass. I tell you that big green figure is figurative--
like any green figure capering on some white Eastern wall."
"My dear Michael," cried Inglewood, in a rising irritation which increased
with the rising wind, "you are getting absurdly fanciful."
"I think of what has just happened," said Michael steadily.
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