ack to his office, took a packet of hundred dollar bills from
the safe, and walked slowly out to where the limousine awaited him.

"Say, what the hell--" began Skidder impatiently; but Puma leaped
lightly to his seat and pulled the fur robe over his knees.

"Now," he said, in excellent humour, "we pick up Mr. Pawling at the
Astor."

"Where are the ladies?"

"They join us, Hotel Rajah. It will be, I trust, an amusing evening."

* * * * *

About midnight, dinner merged noisily into supper in the private
dining room reserved by Mr. Puma for himself and guests at the new
Hotel Rajah.

There had been intermittent dancing during the dinner, but now the
negro jazz specialists had been dismissed with emoluments, and a
music-box substituted; and supper promised to become even a more
lively repetition of the earlier banquet.

Puma was superb--a large, heavy man, he danced as lightly as any
ballerina; and he and Tessa Barclay did a Paraguayan dance together,
with a leisurely and agile perfection of execution that elicited
uproarious demonstrations from the others.

Not a whit winded, Puma resumed his seat at table, laughing as Mr.
Pawling insisted on shaking hands with him.

"You are far too kind to my poor accomplishments," he said in
deprecation. "It was not at all difficult, that Paraguayan dance."

"It was art!" insisted Mr. Pawling, his watery eyes brimming with
emotion. And he pressed the pretty waist of Tessa Barclay.

"Art," rejoined Puma, laying a jewelled hand on his shirt-front, "is
an ecstatic outburst from within, like the song of the bird. Art is
simple; art is not difficult. Where effort begins, art ends. Where
self-expression becomes a labour, art already has perished!"

He thumped his shirt-front with an impassioned and highly-coloured
fist.

"What is art?" he cried, "if it be not pleasure? And pleasure ceases
where effort begins. For me, I am all heart, all art, like there never
was in all the history of the Renaissance. As expresses itself the
little innocent bird in song, so in my pictures I express myself. It
is no effort. It is in me. It is born. Behold! Art has given birth to
Beauty!"

"And the result," added Skidder, "is a _ne plus ultra par excellence_
which gathers in the popular coin every time. And say, if we had a
Broadway theatre to run our stuff, and Angelo Puma to soopervise the
combine--oh boy!--" He smote Mr. Pawling upon his bony back a