"We are a nation of prudes," declared Mr. Paul, with emphasis, "and there is no vice that rots a people to the core so rapidly as the vice of prudery. All our good red blood has passed into a limbo of social ostracism along with ladies' legs." "I was just thinking," commented Mr. Hogarth, who aspired to the rakish and achieved the asinine, "that the last-named subject had been particularly in evidence of late. What with the ballet and the bicycle--" He blushed and glanced at Miss Musin. She was smiling. "Oh, I don't object," she said, "so long as they are well shaped." Mr. Nevins upheld her from an artistic stand-point. "I hold," he said, authoritatively, "that indecency can only exist where beauty is wanting. All beauty is moral. I have noticed in regard to my models--" "On the contrary," interrupted Mr. Paul, "there is no such thing as beauty. It is merely the creation of a diseased imagination pursuing novelty. We call nature beautiful, but it is only a term we employ to express a chimera of the senses. Nature is not beautiful. Its colors are glaringly defective. It is ugly. The universe is ugly. Civilization is ugly. We are ugly--" "Oh, Mr. Paul!" said Miss Musin, reproachfully. "Our one consolation," continued Mr. Paul, in an unmoved voice, "is the knowledge that if we could possibly have been uglier we should have been so created. Providence would have seen to it." "When Providence provided ugliness," put in Mr. Morris, good-naturedly, "it provided ignorance along with it." Mr. Ardly, who was eating his dinner with a copy of the _Evening Post_ spread out upon his knees, looked up languidly. "We are becoming unpleasantly personal," he remarked. "Personalities in conversation should be avoided as sedulously as onions in soup. They are stimulating, but vulgar." Mr. Paul seized the bait of the unconscious thrower with avidity. "Vulgarity," he announced, with ringing emphasis, "is the most prominent factor in the universe. It is as essential to our existence as the original slime from which we and it emanated. If there is one thing more vulgar than nature, it is civilization. Whatever remnant of innocence nature left in the mind of man civilization has wiped out. It has debased the human intellect--" "And deformed the human figure," interpolated Mr. Nevins, with a sigh. "Oh, for the days of Praxiteles!" The emotionless tones of Mr. Paul flowed smoothly on. "And if there is one thing more vulgar than civilization, it is art." Mr. Nevins retorted in a voice of storm. "Sir," he cried, "art is my divinity!" "A vulgar superstition," commented Mr. Paul, calmly; and he pointed to a poster beside Mr. Nevins's plate. "You call that art, I suppose?" Mr. Nevins colored, but met him valiantly. "No," he returned; "I call that bread and meat." As the girl next him rose from her chair she bestowed upon him an approving smile, which he returned with sentimental interest.