Then Westguard arose once more and told them all about the higher type of novel he was writing for humanity's sake, and became so interested and absorbed in his own business that the impatient shuffling of shabby feet on the floor alone interrupted him. "Has anybody," inquired De Groot, sweetly, "any vital question to ask--any burning inquiry of deeper, loftier import, which has perhaps long remained unanswered in his heart?" A gentleman known usually as "Mike the Mink" arose and indicated with derisive thumb a picture among the Dankmere collection, optimistically attributed to Correggio: "Is that Salome, mister?" he inquired with a leer. De Groot looked at the canvas, slightly startled. "No, my dear friend; that is a picture painted hundreds of years ago by a great Italian master. It is called 'Danaë.' Jupiter, you know, came to her in a shower of gold----" "They all have to come across with it," remarked the Mink. Somebody observed that if the police caught the dago who painted it they'd pinch him. To make a diversion, and with her own fair hands, Cyrille Caldera summoned the derelicts to sandwiches and ginger-ale; and De Groot, dashing more unmanly moisture from his monocle, went about resolutely shaking hands, while Westguard and the hirsute young man sang "Comrades" with much feeling. Quarren, still unrecognised, edged his way out and rejoined Dankmere on the front stoop. Neither made any comment on the proceedings. Later the derelicts, moodily replete, shuffled forth into the night, herded lovingly by De Groot, still shaking hands. From the corner of the street opposite, Quarren and Dankmere observed their departure, and, later, they beheld De Groot and Mrs. Caldera slip around the block and discreetly disappear into a 1912 touring-car with silver mountings and two men in livery on the box. Westguard, truer to his principles, took a tram and Quarren and the Earl returned to their gallery with mixed emotions, and opened every window top and bottom. "It's all right in its way, I suppose," said Quarren. "Probably De Groot means well, but there's no conversation possible between a man who has just dined rather heavily, and a man who has no chance of dining at all." "Like preaching Christ to the poor from a Fifth Avenue pulpit," said Dankmere, vaguely. "How do you mean?" "A church on a side street would seem to serve the purpose. And the poor need the difference." "I don't know about those matters." "No; I don't either. It's easy, cheap, and popular to knock the clergy.... Still, somehow or other, I can't seem to forget that the disciples were poor--and it bothers me a lot, Quarren." Quarren said: "Haven't you and I enough to worry us concerning our own morals?" Dankmere, who had been closing up and piling together the Undertaker's camp-chairs, looked around at the younger man. "What did you say?" he asked.