Englishman."

"Bravo, Geisner! You actually make me for the minute," cried Ford.

"You should be! Has any other people anything to compare? There is not
one other whose great writers could not almost be counted on the fingers
of one hand. Spain has Cervantes and he is always being thrown at us.
Germany has Goethe, Heine, Schiller. France so seldom sees literary
genius that a man like Victor Hugo sends her into hysterics of
self-admiration. But I'm afraid I'm lecturing."

"It's all right, Geisner," remarked Connie. "It's not only what you say
but how you say it. But what are you driving at?"

"Just this! Nations seldom do all things with equal vigour and fervour
and opportunity, so one excels another and is itself excelled. England
excels in the simplest and strongest form of expression, literature. She
is defective in other forms and borrows from us. But so we others borrow
from her. Puritanism did not crush English art. English art, in the
national way of expressing the national feeling, kept steadily on."

"Thanks! I think I'll sit down," he added, as Stratton handed him a
tumbler half-filled with wine and a water-bottle. He filled the tumbler
from the bottle, put them on the table, took cigarettes in a case from
his pocket and lighted one at a gas jet behind him.

"Do you take water with your wine?" asked Stratton of Ned.

"I don't take wine at all, thank you," said Ned.

"What!" exclaimed Connie, sitting up. "You don't smoke and you don't
drink wine. Why, you are a regular Arab. But you must have something.
Arty! Rouse up and light the little stove again! You'll have some tea,
Ned. Oh! It's no trouble. Arty will make it for me and it will do him
good. What do you think of this oration of Geisner's?"

"I suppose it's all right," said Ned. "But I can't see what good it does
myself."

"How's that?"

"Well, it's no use saying one thing and meaning another. This talk of
'art' seems to me selfish while the world to most people is a hell that
it's pain to live in. I am sorry if I say what you don't like."

"Never mind that," said Connie, as cheerfully as ever. "You've been
worrying, too. Have it out, so that we can all jump on you at once! I
warn you, you won't have an ally."

"I suppose not," answered Ned, hotly. "You are all very kind and mean
well, but do you know how people live, how they exist, what life outside
is?"

Geisner had sat down in a low chair near by, his cigarette between his
lips, his gla