I beg your pardon if my poor choice of language has
conveyed any such impression. What I am trying to get at, doctor, in my
inexpert way, is that I talked with this girl, and while I exchanged
only a few words with her, nevertheless what she said--yes, and her
bearing as well, her look, everything about her--impressed me as being
entirely rational."

He fixed her with a hostile glare and at her he aimed a blunt gimlet of
a forefinger.

"Are you quite sure you are entirely sane yourself?"

"I trust I am fairly normal."

"Got any little funny quirks in your brain? Any little temperamental
crotchets in which you differ from the run of people round you? Think
now!"

"Well," she confessed, "I don't like cats--I hate cats. And I don't like
figured wall paper. And I don't like--"

"That will be sufficient. Take the first point: You hate cats. On that
count alone any confirmed cat lover would regard you as being as crazy
as a March hare. But until you start going round trying to kill other
people's cats or trying to kill other people who own cats there's
probably no danger that anyone will prefer charges of lunacy against you
and have you locked up."

She smiled a little in spite of her earnestness.

"Perhaps it is symptomatic of a lesion in my brain that I should be
concerning myself in the case of a strange girl whom I have seen but
once--is that also in your thoughts, Doctor McGlore?"

"We'll waive that," he said. "For the sake of argument we'll concede
that your indicative peculiarities assume a harmless phase at present.
But this Vinsolving girl's case is different--hers were not harmless.
Her acts were amply conclusive to establish proof of her mental
condition."

"From the district attorney's statement to me I rather got the
impression that she did not indulge in any abnormal conduct while before
you for examination."

"Did he tell you of her blank refusal to answer the simplest of the
questions my associate and I put to her?"

"Doctor," she countered, seeking to woo him into a better humor, "would
you construe silence on a woman's part as necessarily a mark of
insanity? It is a rare thing, I concede. But might it not sometimes be
an admirable thing as well?"

But this gruff old man was not to be cajoled into pleasanter channels
than the course his mood steered for him.

"We'll waive that too. Anyhow, the mother's evidence was enough."

"But was there anything else other than the mother's unsupported