“Did you ever see him when he was not calm?” Barnes asked.

“None of the fool things said—and there were a lot of them—seemed to disturb him. Drake can’t talk anything but money and women. His wife has a little education, enough to say a few things about books and pictures and call it art. Judge Crawford has traveled and knows a good deal about New York, and Mr. Silvester is a keen one on business. So among them all, the time up to eleven passed somehow, and Drake seemed to feel satisfied with his distinguished guest and all that, though it seemed to me he was watching him very carefully, and I had not heard him ask the visitor about the camera—the picture business, you know. He had promised to do that sometime during the evening.

“But after we sat down at the table, it seemed to me the atmosphere changed. In the first place, it seemed to me it would have been no more than common decency, seeing the guest was a religious person, for Drake to ask him at least to say grace. In fact, I was looking for it, but Drake is about the most irreligious man I know. He just hasn’t any religion that I could ever detect. His whole life is simply saturated with money, and what he calls ‘power.’

“There were five kinds of liquor offered, and Drake had laid himself out on the menu and decorations. And all the time, I could see he was trying to find an easy way to lead up to that question about the picture, and something in the attitude or manner of the guest seemed to make it difficult.

“Along toward the end of the dinner—it was then about one or one thirty in the morning—Drake leaned over the table, and I thought I could see by his manner that he was about to ask Jesus the question, when a little accident happened. One of the servants, in removing a dish from the table in front Jesus, spilled its entire contents on his clothes. It was a spiced sauce of some kind, and it ran down his coat in a wide, red stream. The servant, who was a young man, looked over at Mrs. Drake with a perfectly frightened expression, and then in the most abject manner began a profuse apology to Jesus.

“In all my life, Barnes, I think it is only fair to say, I never witnessed a finer exhibition of gentlemanly courtesy than your man Jesus showed to this frightened servant. The few words he spoke put the young man at his ease and made him feel as if a thing of absolutely no importance had happened.