work,
'Jim,' she shouted, 'are you there?' No answer came from the inner room.
'He's a goner,' she said, wringing out a stocking."

"But surely," said Dr. Florret, "you don't admire a woman for being
indifferent to the death of her husband?"

"I don't admire her for that," replied Washburn, "and I don't blame her.
I didn't make the world and I'm not responsible for it. What I do admire
her for is not pretending a grief she didn't feel. In Berkeley Square
she'd have met me at the door with an agonised face and a handkerchief
to her eyes.

"Assume a virtue, if you have it not," murmured Dr. Florret.

"Go on," said Washburn. "How does it run? 'That monster, custom, who all
sense doth eat, of devil's habit, is angel yet in this, that to the use
of actions fair and good he gives a frock that aptly is put on.' So was
the lion's skin by the ass, but it showed him only the more an ass. Here
asses go about as asses, but there are lions also. I had a woman under
my hands only a little while ago. I could have cured her easily. Why she
got worse every day instead of better I could not understand. Then by
accident learned the truth: instead of helping me she was doing all
she could to kill herself. 'I must, Doctor,' she cried. 'I must. I have
promised. If I get well he will only leave me, and if I die now he has
sworn to be good to the children.' Here, I tell you, they live--think
their thoughts, work their will, kill those they hate, die for those
they love; savages if you like, but savage men and women, not bloodless
dolls."

"I prefer the dolls," concluded Dr. Florret.

"I admit they are pretty," answered Washburn.

"I remember," said my father, "the first masked ball I ever went to when
I was a student in Paris. It struck me just as you say, Hal; everybody
was so exactly alike. I was glad to get out into the street and see
faces."

"But I thought they always unmasked at midnight," said the second Mrs.
Teidelmann in her soft, languid tones.

"I did not wait," explained my father.

"That was a pity," she replied. "I should have been interested to see
what they were like, underneath."

"I might have been disappointed," answered my father. "I agree with Dr.
Florret that sometimes the mask is an improvement."

Barbara was right. She was a beautiful woman, with a face that would
have been singularly winning if one could have avoided the hard cold
eyes ever restless behind the half-closed lids.

Always she was very ki