ne common affliction.
Artists, musicians, all the lower order of the intellect, marry. They
must. They can't help it. It's the one thing you can't resist. You begin
it when you're poor to save the expense of a servant, and you keep it up
when you succeed to have some one over you to make you work. You belong
psychologically to the intellectually dependent classes, the
clinging-vine family, the masculine parasites; and as you can't help
being married, you are always damning it, holding it responsible for all
your failures."

At this characteristic speech, the five artists shifted slightly, and
looked at De Gollyer over their mustaches with a lingering appetite,
much as a group of terriers respect the family cat.

"My dear chaps, speaking as a critic," continued De Gollyer, pleasantly
aware of the antagonism he had exploded, "you remain children afraid of
the dark--afraid of being alone. Solitude frightens you. You lack the
quality of self-sufficiency that is the characteristic of the higher
critical faculties. You marry because you need a nurse."

He ceased, thoroughly satisfied with the prospect of having brought on
a quarrel, raised thumb and first finger in a gingerly loop, ordered a
dash of sherry and winked across the group to Tommers, who was listening
around his paper from the reading-room.

"De Gollyer, you are only a 'who's who' of art," said Quinny, with,
however, a hungry gratitude for a topic of such possibilities. "You
understand nothing of psychology. An artist is a multiple personality;
with each picture he paints he seeks a new inspiration. What is
inspiration?"

"Ah, that's the point--inspiration," said Steingall, waking up.

"Inspiration," said Quinny, eliminating Steingall from his preserves
with the gesture of brushing away a fly--"inspiration is only a form of
hypnosis, under the spell of which a man is capable of rising outside of
and beyond himself, as a horse, under extraordinary stress, exerts a
muscular force far beyond his accredited strength. The race of geniuses,
little and big, are constantly seeking this outward force to hypnotize
them into a supreme intellectual effort. Talent does not understand such
a process; it is mechanical, unvarying, chop-chop, day in and day out.
Now, what you call inspiration may be communicated in many ways--by the
spectacle of a mob, by a panorama of nature, by sudden and violent
contrasts of points of view; but, above all, as a continual stimulus,
it com