The conversation, carried on amid clouds of fragrant tobacco smoke and
with potations, not excessive but comfortably frequent, was quiet and
unflagging, possessing, for the most part, that mellow quality which is
seldom attained before the small hours and the third cigar.

"Yes, virtue has to be its own reward," Tom Bently was saying lightly,
"for, don't you see, the people who practice it are too narrow-minded
to appreciate any thing else."

"And that makes it the most poorly paid of all the professions," was
the retort of Fred Rangely, who was lounging in a big easy chair;
"except literature, that is. Even sin is said to get death for its
wage, and that is something."

"Virtue may be an inestimable prize for any thing you newspaper men can
tell. It is not a commodity you are used to handling."

"Literature has little to do with virtue, it is true," was the
response. "Who would read a novel about virtuous people, for instance?
I'd as soon study the catechism."

"How art has to occupy itself with iniquity," Fenton observed with a
philosophical puff of his cigar. "Or what people call iniquity; though
a truer definition would be nature."

"Painting occupies itself with iniquity in its models," Rangely said
lazily. "I heard to-day--"

"No scandals," interrupted Grant Herman, good humoredly. "You are going