“What?” cried Steingall.  “But you said—­”

“My dear boy, I have germinated some new ideas,” said Quinny, unconcerned.  “The story has a moral,—­I detest morals,—­but this has one.  An artist should always marry unhappily, and do you know why?  Purely a question of chemistry.  Towsey, when do you work the best?”

“How do you mean?” said Towsey, rousing himself.

“I’ve heard you say that you worked best when your nerves were all on edge—­night out, cucumbers, thunder-storm, or a touch of fever.”

“Yes, that’s so.”

“Can any one work well when everything is calm?” continued Quinny, triumphantly, to the amazement of Rankin and Steingall.  “Can you work on a clear spring day, when nothing bothers you and the first of the month is two weeks off, eh?  Of course you can’t.  Happiness is the enemy of the artist.  It puts to sleep the faculties.  Contentment is a drug.  My dear men, an artist should always be unhappy.  Perpetual state of fermentation sets the nerves throbbing, sensitive to impressions.  Exaltation and remorse, anger and inspiration, all hodge-podge, chemical action and reaction, all this we are blessed with when we are unhappily married.  Domestic infelicity drives us to our art; happiness makes us neglect it.  Shall I tell you what I do when everything is smooth, no nerves, no inspiration, fat, puffy Sunday-dinner-feeling, too happy, can’t work?  I go home and start a quarrel with my wife.”

“And then you can work,” cried Steingall, roaring with laughter.  “By Jove, you are immense!”

“Never better,” said Quinny, who appeared like a prophet.

The four artists, who had listened to Herkimer’s story in that gradual thickening depression which the subject of matrimony always let down over them, suddenly brightened visibly.  On their faces appeared the look of inward speculation, and then a ray of light.

Little Towsey, who from his arrival had sulked, fretted, and fumed, jumped up energetically and flung away his third cigar.

“Here, where are you going?” said Rankin in protest.

“Over to the studio,” said Towsey, quite unconsciously.  “I feel like a little work.”

ONE HUNDRED IN THE DARK

They were discussing languidly, as such groups do, seeking from each topic a peg on which to hang a few epigrams that might be retold in the lip currency of the club—­Steingall, the painter, florid of gesture and effete, foreign in type, with black-rimmed glasses and trailing ribbon of black silk that cut across his cropped beard and cavalry mustaches; De Gollyer, a critic, who preferred to be known as a man about town, short, feverish, incisive, who slew platitudes with one adjective and tagged a reputation with three; Rankin, the architect, always in a defensive explanatory attitude, who held his elbows on the table, his hands before his long sliding nose, and gestured with his