no liberty, no individualism, no
seclusion, having to account every night for your actions, for your
thoughts, for the things you dream--ah, the dreams! The Chinese are
right, the Japanese are right. It's we Westerners who are all wrong.
It's the creative only that counts. The woman should be subordinated,
should be kept down, taught the voluptuousness of obedience. By Jove!
that's it. We don't assert ourselves. It's this confounded Anglo-Saxon
sentimentality that's choking art--that's what it is."

At the familiar phrases of Steingall's outburst, Rankin wagged his head
in unequivocal assent, Stibo smiled so as to show his fine upper teeth,
and Towsey flung away his cigar, saying:

"Words, words."

At this moment when Quinny, who had digested Steingall's argument, was
preparing to devour the whole topic, Britt Herkimer, the sculptor,
joined them. He was a guest, just in from Paris, where he had been
established twenty years, one of the five men in art whom one counted on
the fingers when the word genius was pronounced. Mentally and physically
a German, he spoke English with a French accent. His hair was cropped
_en brosse_, and in his brown Japanese face only the eyes, staccato,
furtive, and drunk with curiosity, could be seen. He was direct,
opinionated, bristling with energy, one of those tireless workers who
disdain their youth and treat it as a disease. His entry into the group
of his more socially domesticated confreres was like the return of a
wolf-hound among the housedogs.

"Still smashing idols?" he said, slapping the shoulder of Steingall,
with whom and Quinny he had passed his student days, "Well, what's the
row?"

"My dear Britt, we are reforming matrimony. Steingall is for the
importation of Mongolian wives," said De Gollyer, who had written two
favorable articles on Herkimer, "while Quinny is for founding a school
for wives on most novel and interesting lines."

"That's odd," said Herkimer, with a slight frown.

"On the contrary, no," said De Gollyer; "we always abolish matrimony
from four to six."

"You didn't understand me," said Herkimer, with the sharpness he used in
his classes.

From his tone the group perceived that the hazards had brought to him
some abrupt coincidence. They waited with an involuntary silence, which
in itself was a rare tribute.

"Remember Rantoul?" said Herkimer, rolling a cigarette and using a jerky
diction.

"Clyde Rantoul?" said Stibo.

"Don Furioso Barebones R