s
struck moisture into my own, "I know. But you're living it down--no
woman could do more."

"Really?" she begged, her features working, "really, doctor? Heaven
knows I try!"

"And you never slip back. _You never slip back!_" he said slowly and
emphatically. "Just think what that: means, Miss Vint!"

We nodded at each other and she hurried off, almost smiling.

"She looks no more insane than I do," I suggested, and again he
shrugged.

"There's where it is," he answered quietly; "she's just a little over
the line, that's all. She's Levi B. Vint's daughter, you know."

"Really!"

"I'd hate to think what she pays a week. What she's really worrying
about, I believe, is the old man's money. She insists he was all
right, you know, and all this exposure business, though it couldn't
shake her trust in the old scoundrel, got on her nerves and she got
worrying over herself. Everybody argued with her--the whole Vint gang
are a set of bronze mules, you know--and finally she arrived at a
definite _idee fixe_: I'm sure it could have been prevented. Anyway,
she thinks she's--she's all sorts of a bad lot, you know. She won't
speak to the girls here--not even to the maids. She says she might
corrupt them."

"How absurd--I mean how sad! But she's so healthy; she'll soon
recover?"

"I don't know," he said briefly, and something scared me in his voice.
"She's a very hard case. A bad age."

We walked in silence through a long glass-walled hall, a sort of
conservatory, with palms and caged canaries chirping and trilling.

"I hate those birds!" I cried nervously; he stopped and looked
thoughtfully into me--it was no less than that.

"That's interesting," he said abruptly, "I don't like 'em, either. And
you're one of the best-balanced women I know. Mother, too--she doesn't
care for them. No--nor Beatrix."

Beatrix was the hardy young woman who contemplated marrying him--a
tremendous venture, it seemed to me!

"But they seem to like 'em here. The crazier they are (there's nobody
bad here, you know) the more they like 'em, ... Did you know mediums
and spiritualists and all that sort can't live without 'em? I never
heard anybody mention it, but it's so. When I went over to Lourdes,
last year, I made a point of looking up the families of the people that
had the visions, and they all kept larks in cages----"

I saw he was following some train of thought and kept silence. At
length he shrugged his shoulders.