"I must get home now," she said, in a tone so tender that it seemed to beg pardon for this abandonment. "Arthur is waiting for me and his dinner; and if he doesn't get the latter at least, I won't answer for the consequences. Mr. Calvin was with him when I came away." "Mr. Peter Calvin!" exclaimed the other, in some surprise. "Yes; he has bought one of Arthur's pictures, and he wants Arthur to propose him at the St. Filipe Club, I believe." She spoke in perfect ignorance of the tumult her words excited in her hearer's mind. Long after Edith was gone Helen sat looking out into the darkening sky and thinking of Arthur Fenton. She had heard him talk too often about Mr. Peter Calvin not to know what was implied by this new friendship. Mr. Peter Calvin had been for years the head and front of Boston Philistinism in art. He had been the patron of subservient artists; the chairman of committees for the purchase of public statues; an elegant writer upon such live and timely topics as _Plaster Casting among the Egyptians, Notes upon Abyssinian Statues_, while his monograph upon the question, _What Was the Original Cost of the Venus de Milo?_ had by his flatterers been pronounced the masterpiece of all known art essays for power and critical research. His was a prominent name upon the covers of dilettante art journals; it was he who effectually crushed young and too daringly independent artists; who repressed impertinent originality; who headed the hosts of conventionality against individuality or genius which held itself above the established canons of antiquated tradition. He was the High Priest of Boston conservatism; the presiding genius of Philistia; and until the St. Filipe Club entered a protest against him by refusing to admit him to membership, his power had scarcely received a blow. Tom Bently always insisted, with much profanity, that Mr. Peter Calvin was a joke. "He writes with tremendous pomposity," Tom would say, "and he is in no end of societies for molly-coddling art. He goes on, too, about the plaster casts at that hospital for decrepit gods, the Art Museum, as if his whole soul was in the plaster barrels of the Greeks. But bless your soul! It's only his little joke. He doesn't really mean any thing by it. He's only a stupendous joke himself."