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 studios and the biggest windows paint the most rubbishy pictures?"

"Perfectly true."

"Then let's drink to their worldly glory and eternal shame!"

Grover drank and set down his glass, hoping that after this propitious start the talk would revolve about art and artists and divulge precious secrets. But it didn't; it revolved about what Rosalie was preparing for lunch and the specific virtues, charms, and possibilities of the lowly onion. Onion soup, with plenty of grated cheese, it was agreed, was a solution of half the human problems. In the words of Casimir, ça donnait du courage. French servants are good, Grover reflected, because they have sacred rites rather than menial duties to perform.

When the possibilities of the onion were exhausted, and other articles of diet enthusiastically endorsed, the talk passed to America and Americans, and Grover found himself under the wearisome necessity of defending once more the thesis that Americans were not all solely preoccupied with their dollars, their bathtubs, their skyscrapers, and their jazz-bands. His defence was mechanical and dispirited, for he knew from experience that no amount of argument would alter the continental conception of an American.

Why did he die? Why did he die? He heard the old formula in his mind as he surveyed a mutton chop poised on his fork. The formula was trying to express