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for you must have brandled each other's sprinklers rapturously up there."
"The frame was well worth the picture, for, as I was saying before, the studio was a museum of lewd art worthy of Sodom or of Babylon. Paintings, statues, bronzes, plaster casts—either masterpieces of Paphian art or of Priapean designs, emerged from amidst deep-tinted silks of velvety softness, amidst sparkling crystals, gem-like enamel, golden china or opaline majolica, varied with yataghans and Turkish sabres, with hilts and scabbards of gold and silver filigree mark, all studded with coral and turquoise, or other more sparkling precious stones.
"From huge Chinese bowls rose costly ferns, dainty Indian palms, creeping plants and parasites, with wicked-looking flowers from American forests, and feathery grasses from the Nile in Sèvres vases; whilst from above, ever and anon, a shower of full-blown red and pink roses came pouring down, mingling their intoxicating scent with that of the attar which ascended in white cloudlets from censers and silver chafing-dishes.
"The perfume of that over-heated atmo-
