, for fear of Mrs. Grundy. Look at the real
people--Rachel, Wagner, Turner, Bernhardt, and a thousand others. Were
they bound by the marriage laws? What will these crowds of tiny men and
petty women do who come from the country parlors and corn-shocks of the
West? They will puddle around a little while, paint and muddle a few
petty things, then marry and go back to the ironing-board and the furrow
where they belong. What's the matter with American art? It's too cursed
normal, that's what. It's too neat and sweet and restrained--no license,
no "go" to it. What's the matter with you, to be personal?"

"Too well balanced."

"Precisely. You _talk_ like a man of power, but model like a cursed
niggling prude. You're bitten with the new madness. You're the Bryan of
art. 'The dear people' is your cry. Damn the people! They don't know a
good thing when they see it. Why consider the millions? Consider the
few, those who have the taste and the dollars. That's the way all the
big men of the past had to do. Look at Rubens and Michael Angelo and
Titian--all the big bunch; they were all frank, gross feeders, lovers of
beauty, defiant of conventions."

He had forgotten where he sat, but he was not neglecting his hostess. He
took a satanic satisfaction in seeing her lovely eyes widen and glow as
he went on. Subtly flattering her by including her among the very few
who could understand his ideals, he seemed to draw her apart to his
side--appealing to her for support against the coarse and foolish hosts
represented by the Mosses, while Marshall Haney sat in a kind of stupor,
his eyes alone speaking, as if to ask: "What the divil is the little man
with the cough so hot about?"

Moss, accustomed to Humiston's savage diatribes, roared out objections
or laughed him to scorn, while Mrs. Moss tried her best to turn the mad
artist's mind upon more suitable subjects. He had been deeply hurt and
financially distressed by the failure of his exhibits in Pittsburg and
Chicago, and was now taking it out on his friends. His passion, his
bitter, vengeful cry against the ignorant masses of the world was
something Bertha had read about, but never felt; but she quivered now
with the half-disclosed fury of the disappointed austere soul.

Could it be possible that this savage man, so worn and ill, had painted
those dim, vague pictures of flower-like girls whose limbs were involved
in blossoming vines?

He concluded at last: "The only place in the world