“Stop that!” he cried.
“It pricks you?” said Sarelli suavely; “what do you think of this?” he played again, crouching over the piano, and making the notes sound like the crying of a wounded animal.
“For me!” he said, swinging round, and rising.
“Your health! And so you don't believe in suicide, but in murder? The custom is the other way; but you don't believe in customs? Customs are only for Society?” He drank a glass of kummel. “You do not love Society?”
Harz looked at him intently; he did not want to quarrel.
“I am not too fond of other people's thoughts,” he said at last; “I prefer to think my own.
“And is Society never right? That poor Society!”
“Society! What is Society—a few men in good coats? What has it done for me?”
Sarelli bit the end off a cigar.
“Ah!” he said; “now we are coming to it. It is good to be an artist, a fine bantam of an artist; where other men have their dis-ci-pline, he has his, what shall we say—his mound of roses?”