“Yes, Mr. Grayson.” “If anybody inquires for me you will find me either on this floor or in the library above. Don't forget, and don't make any mistake. “No, suh--ain't goin' to be no mistake.” This done, the old gentleman moved to the mirror, and gave a sidelong glance at his perfectly appointed person--he had been dining at the Portmans', had left the table early, and was in full evening dress. The inspection proved that the points of his collar wanted straightening the thousandth part of an inch, and that his sparse gray locks needed combing a wee bit further toward his cheek bones. These, with a certain rebellious fold in his necktie, having been brought into place, the guardian of the Exeter entered the crowded room, picked a magazine from the shelves and dropped into his accustomed seat. Holker Morris and Lagarge now strolled in and drawing up to a small table adjoining Peter's touched a tiny bell. This answered, and the order given, the two renewed a conversation which had evidently been begun outside, and which was of so absorbing a character that for a moment Peter's face, half hidden by his book, was unnoticed. “Oh!--that's you, Methusaleh, is it!” cried Morris at last. “Move over--have something?” Peter looked up smiling: “Not now, Holker. I will later.” Morris kept on talking. Lagarge, his companion--a thin, cadaverous-looking man with a big head and the general air of having been carved out of an old root--a great expert in ceramics--listening intently, bobbing his head in toy-mandarin fashion whenever one of Holker's iconoclasms cleared the air. “Suppose they did pay thirty thousand dollars for it,” Holker insisted, slapping his knee with his outspread palm. “That makes the picture no better and no worse. If it was mine, and I could afford it, I would sell it to anybody who loved it for thirty cents rather than sell it to a man who didn't, for thirty millions. When Troyon painted it he put his soul into it, and you can no more tack a price to that than you can stick an auction card on a summer cloud, or appraise the perfume from a rose garden. It has no money value, Legarge, and never will have. You might as well list sunsets on the Stock Exchange.” “But Troyon had to live, Holker,” chimed in Harrington, who, with the freedom accorded every member of the club--one of its greatest charms--had just joined the group and sat listening. “Yes,” rejoined Morris, a quizzical expression crossing his face--“that was the curse of it. He was born a man and had a stomach instead of being born a god without one. As to living--he didn't really live--no great painter really lives until he is dead. And that's the way it should be--they would never have become immortal with a box full of bonds among their assets. They would have stopped work. Now they can rest in their graves with the consciousness that they have done their level best.”