at perfectly quietly, before the panic broke out,
but we had to leave the young lady's father behind. I forgot to say I had
already become acquainted with Hahlstroem and his daughter in Berlin.
Thus, fate brought us together, and I consider myself responsible for
Miss Hahlstroem, both as a physician and a human being. She is an artistic
wonder. She is a dancer."

Willy Snyders gave a witty account of the attack of Webster and Forster's
agent; and the conversation turned on art in general and on American art
in particular.

"Millions of dollars annually," said Bonifacius Ritter, "are spent upon
all sorts of art objects, an enormous sum on paintings alone. At the same
time, there is a class of persons here of Puritanic descent to whom any
kind of art is the abomination of the arch-enemy. For instance, there is
an association of pious pillars of society, an association of vandals,
invested with certain civic rights, whose object is the abolition of
filth and the maintenance of chastity. To that end it recently broke into
one of the famous clubs of the New York _jeunesse doree_ and destroyed a
number of irreplaceable art treasures, masterpieces, among them even a
Venus by Titian."

"And the relation of the amateurs here," said Lobkowitz, "to their
artistic possessions is very funny. You should see how they place their
paintings. The "Crucifixion" by Munkaczy is displayed in a department
store in Philadelphia. The Goulds have Rembrandts in their extremely
comfortable bathrooms. Of course, I have nothing to say against good
pictures hanging in hotel halls and stairways. The largest bar-room
in New York has the whole Barbizon school--Millets, Courbets,
Bastien-Lepages, and Daubignys--hanging over the bar."

"My sole reason," said Franck, "for going there every day for my whisky
and soda."

Ritter, Snyders and Lobkowitz burst out laughing.

Franck had the looks of a gypsy; so that two more un-European types,
as Frederick said to himself, than he and Willy Snyders were scarcely
conceivable. Though a year older than Frederick, Franck, small-boned and
youthfully slim, seemed to be seven or eight years younger. He was
forever shoving from his eyes a pitch-black lock, which promptly fell
over his forehead again to the top of his nose. He drank heavily and kept
smiling. He smiled, while the others laughed as he expounded the relation
of art to whisky.

A sense of security such as he had not experienced in years came over
Fre