"Dear, dear friends," he said tremulously, "believe me—oh, believe me that the rich are not happy! Only the perspiring labourer knows what is true contentment. The question of poverty is a great social question. With me it is a religion. Oh, I could go on forever on this subject, dear friends, and talk on and on and on——"
Emotion again checked him—or perhaps he had lost the thread of his discourse—or possibly he had attained its limit—but he filled it out by coming down from the platform and shaking hands so vigorously that the gardenia in his lapel presently fell out.
Cyrille Caldera rose, fresh and dainty and smiling, and discoursed single-tax and duplex tenements, getting the two subjects mixed but not minding that. Also she pointed at the Calla lily and explained that the lily was the emblem of purity. Which may have had something to do with something or other.
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.