Decidedly not, we reply. For how can we even keep company with Khalid, who has become such a maniac on flounces? And was this fantastic, phantasmagoric rhapsody all inspired by Najma’s simple remark on his hair?
Fruitful is thy word, O woman!
But being so far away now from the Hermitage in the Bronx, what has the “cherry in the cocktail” and “the olive in the oyster patty” to do with all this?
Howbeit, the following deserves a place as the tail-flounce of his Fantasy.
“Your superman and superwoman,” says he, with philosophic calm, “may go Adam-and-Eve like if they choose. But can they, even in that chaste and splendid nudity, dispense with ruffles and flounces?
Pray, tell me, did not our first parents spoon and sentimentalise in the Paradise, before the Serpent appeared? And would they not often whisper unto each other, ‘Ah, Adam, ah, Eve!’ sighing likewise for sweeter things? And what about those fatal Apples, those two sour fruits of their Love?—I tell thee every newborn babe is the magnificent flesh-flounce of a shivering, trembling, nudity.
And I Khalid, what am I but the visible ruffle of an invisible skirt? Verily, I am; and thou, too, my Brother. Yea, and this aquaterrestrial globe and these sidereal heavens are the divine flounces of the Vesture of Allah.”