With that celerity which in very short and stout persons appears to be spontaneous, a sort of elastic quality, the gentleman from room 24 interposed his suddenly outspread napkin. The historian flung himself across the board after the bottle, clawing rather wildly and upsetting things generally. It was but a momentary scene, such as children at school and guests at a summer hotel make more or less merry over, still it drew forth from the genial man of room 24 a remark which slipped into Miss Moyne's ear with the familiarity of well trained humor. "A deluge of wine in a free hotel!" he exclaimed, just above a whisper. "Such generosity is nearly shocking." "I am sorry you mention it," said Miss Moyne, with her brightest and calmest smile; "I have been idealizing the place. A gush of grape-juice on Helicon is a picturesque thing to contemplate." "But a lap-full of claret on Mt. Boab is not so fine, eh? What a farce poetry is! What a humbug is romance!" The historian had sunk back in his chair and was scowling at the purple stain which kept slowly spreading through the fiber of the cloth. "I always do something," he sighed, and his sincerity was obvious. "And always with _aplomb_," remarked little Mrs. Philpot. "It would be a genius who could knock over a claret bottle with grace," added Peck. "Now a jug of ale----" "I was present at table once with Mr. Emerson," began the Kentucky poet, but nobody heard the rest. A waiter came with a heavy napkin to cover the stain, and as he bent over the table he forced the man from room 24 to incline very close to Miss Moyne. "To think of making an instance of Emerson!" he murmured. "Emerson who died before he discovered that men and women have to eat, or that wine will stain a new dress!" "But then he discovered so many things----" she began. "Please mention one of them," he glibly interrupted. "What did Emerson ever discover? Did he ever pen a single truth?" "Aloft in secret veins of air Blows the sweet breath of song," she replied. "He trod the very headlands of truth. But you are not serious----" she checked herself, recollecting that she was speaking to a stranger. "Not serious but emphatically in earnest," he went on, in the same genial tone with which he had begun. "There isn't a thing but cunning phrase-form in anything the man ever wrote. He didn't know how to represent life." "Oh, I see," Miss Moyne ventured, "you are a realist." It is impossible to convey any adequate idea of the peculiar shade of contempt she conveyed through the words. She lifted her head a little higher and her beauty rose apace. It was as if she had stamped her little foot and exclaimed: "Of all things I detest realism--of all men, I hate realists." "But I kept the wine off your dress!" he urged, as though he had heard her thought. "There's nothing good but what is real. Romance is lie-tissue. Reality is truth-tissue."