"Whatever crazy ideas on art," Bently was saying, "aren't good for any thing else have to be put into a book. The surest recommendation in art circles is getting out a book or giving a rubbishy lecture. Every woman who has painted a few bunches of flowers or daubed a little pottery, writes a book to tell how she did it; as if it were the most astonishing thing in the world." "Women are very like hens," interpolated Fenton; "they always cackle most over the smallest egg." "If any one of the crew," continued Bently, "could appreciate a fiftieth part of the suggestions in a single sketch of an old master, she might have something to write about." "But then she would know enough to keep still," said Rangely. "Oh, a woman never knows enough to keep still," Bently retorted. "It is damned amusing to hear the average American----" A chorus of protestations arose. "We'll have nothing about the 'Average American,' Bently!" "Start somebody else on his hobby," suggested Ainsworth; "that's the only way to choke Bently off. Where's Fenton? I never knew him quiet for so long in my life." Arthur had been watching his companions and smoking in silence. He smiled brilliantly at Ainsworth's challenge. "I'm overwhelmed by Bently's oaths," he said. "He outdoes himself to-night." "When it comes time for Tom's epitaph," observed Rangely, "I shall suggest that it be a dash." "Why do you swear so?" inquired Ainsworth. "Don't you think it in execrable taste?" "Taste?" laughed Bently. "Yes; it's so far above all taste as to be a--sight higher and bigger." "I make a distinction," Herman put in good naturedly, "between swearing and blasphemy; and Tom never blasphemes. His cursing is all in the interest of the highest virtues." "Profanity is like smoking," added Tom. "Every thing depends upon how you do it. The English, for instance, smoke for the brutality of the thing; they never have any of the French _finesse,_ and their smoking is nothing less than a crime. But as the Arabs smoke it is one of the loftiest virtues; there's something godlike about it. "It is from smoking," Fenton chimed in, "that the Orientals learned how to treat women; for a woman is like tobacco, the aroma should be enjoyed and the ashes thrown away." "By George!" exclaimed one of the Pagans, moved by some rare compunction to remember that he had a wife at home, "that's infamous, Arthur." "It is my belief," observed Ainsworth deliberately, "that Fenton lies awake nights to invent beastly things to say about women, and when he gets something that he thinks is smart he throws it into the conversation any where, without the slightest regard to whether it fits or not." "What makes you so bitter against women?" asked Bently. "Yes," added Rangely, with mock deprecation. "Why do you want to annihilate the sex? What harm have women ever done to you?"