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."