"No, really?" said Rankin.
"Has she a sister?" said Towsey.
Stibo raised his eyes slowly to Quinny's but veiled as was the look, De Gollyer perceived it, and smilingly registered the knowledge on the ledger of his social secrets.
"That's it, by George! that is it," said Steingall, who hurled the enthusiasm of a reformer into his pessimism. "It's all so simple; but they won't understand. And why—do you know why? Because a woman is jealous. It isn't simply of other women. No, no, that's not it; it's worse than that, ten thousand times worse. She's jealous of your art! That's it! There you have it! She's jealous because she can't understand it, because it takes you away from her, because she can't share it. That's what's terrible about marriage—no liberty, no individualism, no seclusion, having to account every night for your actions, for your thoughts, for the things you dream—ah, the dreams! The Chinese are right, the Japanese are right. It's we Westerners who are all wrong. It's the creative only that counts. The woman should be subordinated, should be kept down, taught the voluptuousness of obedience. By Jove! that's it. We don't assert ourselves. It's this confounded Anglo-Saxon sentimentality that's choking art—that's what it is."
At the familiar phrases of Steingall's outburst, Rankin wagged his head in unequivocal assent, Stibo smiled so as to show his fine upper teeth, and Towsey flung away his cigar, saying:
"Words, words."
At this moment when Quinny, who had digested Steingall's argument, was preparing to devour the whole topic, Britt Herkimer, the sculptor, joined them. He was a guest, just in from Paris, where he had been established twenty years, one of the five men in art whom one counted on the fingers when the word genius was pronounced. Mentally and physically a German, he spoke English with a French accent. His hair was cropped en brosse, and in his brown Japanese face only the eyes, staccato, furtive, and drunk with curiosity, could be seen. He was direct, opinionated, bristling with energy, one of those tireless workers who disdain their youth and treat it as a disease. His entry into the group of his more socially domesticated confrères was like the return of a wolf-hound among the housedogs.
"Still smashing idols?" he said, slapping the shoulder of Steingall, with whom and Quinny he had passed his student days, "Well, what's the row?"
"My dear Britt, we are reforming matrimony. Steingall is for the importation of Mongolian wives," said De Gollyer, who had written two favorable articles on Herkimer, "while Quinny is for founding a school for wives on most novel and interesting lines."
"That's odd," said Herkimer, with a slight frown.