Then they were greeting, with conventional nothings their beautiful hostess; who, with a charming air of triumphant—­but not too triumphant—­proprietorship received them and passed them on, with a low spoken word to Aaron King; “I will take charge of you later.”

Conrad Lagrange, before they drifted apart, found opportunity to growl in his companion’s ear; “A near-great musician—­an actress of divorce court fame—­an art critic, boon companion of our friend Rutlidge—­two free-lance yellow journalists—­a poet—­with leading culture-club women of various brands, and a mob of mere fashion and wealth.  The pickings should be good.  Look at ‘Materialism’, over there.”

In a wheeled chair, attended by a servant in livery, a little apart from the center of the scene,—­as though the pageant of life was about to move on without him,—­but still, with desperate grip, holding his place in the picture, sat the genius of it all—­the millionaire.  The creature’s wasted, skeleton-like limbs, were clothed grotesquely in conventional evening dress.  His haggard, bestial face—­repulsive with every mark of his wicked, licentious years—­grinned with an insane determination to take the place that was his by right of his money bags; while his glazed and sunken eyes shone with fitful gleams, as he rallied the last of his vital forces, with a devilish defiance of the end that was so inevitably near.

As Aaron King, in the splendid strength of his inheritance, went to pay his respects to the master of the house, that poor product of our age was seized by a paroxysm of coughing, that shook him—­gasping and choking—­almost into unconsciousness.  The ready attendant held out a glass of whisky, and he clutched the goblet with skinny hands that, in their trembling eagerness, rattled the crystal against his teeth.  In the momentary respite afforded by the powerful stimulant, he lifted his yellow, claw-like hand to wipe the clammy beads of sweat that gathered upon his wrinkled, ape-like brow; and the painter saw, on one bony, talon-like finger, the gleaming flash of a magnificent diamond.

Mr. Taine greeted the artist with his husky whisper “Hello, old chap—­glad to see you!” Peering into the laughing, chattering, glittering, throng he added, “Some beauties here to-night, heh?  Gad! my boy, but I’ve seen the day I’d be out there among them!  Ha, ha!  Mrs. Taine, Louise, and Jim tried to shelve me—­but I fooled ’em.  Damn me, but I’m game for a good time yet!  A little off my feed, and under the weather; but game, you understand, game as hell!” Then to the attendant—­“Where’s that whisky?” And, again, his yellow, claw-like hand—­with that beautiful diamond, a gleaming point of pure, white light—­lifted the glass to his grinning lips.

When Mrs. Taine appeared to claim the artist, her husband—­huddled in his chair, an unclean heap of all but decaying flesh—­watched them go, with hidden, impotent rage.

A few moments later, as Mrs. Taine and her charge were leaving one group of celebrities in search of another they encountered Conrad Lagrange.  “What’s this I see?” gibed the novelist, mockingly.  “Is it ’Art being led by Beauty to the Judges and Executioners’? or, is it ’Beauty presenting an Artist to the Gods of Modern Art’?”