ast patient of men
unless the will that coerced him was his own; constraint to another's,
however reasonable, irked him to exasperation; so that these falterings
in forbidden ways were really (as he assured Eve de Montalais when, one
day, she caught him creeping round his room, one hand pressed against
the wall for support, the other to his side) in the nature of a sop to
his self-respect.

"You've only got to tell me not to do a thing often enough," he
commented as she led him back to his chair, "to fill me with unholy
desire to do it if I die in the attempt."

"Isn't that a rather common human failing?" she asked, wheeling the
invalid chair through one of the french windows to the balcony.

"That's what makes it all seem so unfair."

Smiling, the woman turned the back of the chair to the brightest glare
of sunshine, draped a light rug over the invalid's knees, and seated
herself in a wicker chair, facing him.

"Makes all what seem so unfair?"

"The indignity of being born human." He accepted a cigarette and waxed
didactic: "The one thing that the ego can find to reconcile it with
existence is belief in its own uniquity."

"I don't think," she interrupted with a severe face belied by amused
eyes, "that sounds quite nice."

"Uniquity? Because it sounds like iniquity? They are not unrelated.
What makes iniquity seem attractive is as a rule its departure from the
commonplace."

"But you were saying--?"

"Merely it's our personal belief that our emotions and sensations and
ways of thought are peculiar to ourselves, individually, that sometimes
makes the game seem worth the scandal."

"Yes: one presumes we all do think that..."

"But no sooner does one get firmly established in that particular phase
of self-complacence than along comes Life, grinning like a gamin, and
kicks over our pretty house of cards--shows us up to ourselves by
revealing our pet, exclusive idiosyncrasies as simple infirmities all
mortal flesh is heir to."

"Monsieur is cynic..."

"Madame means obvious. Well: if I patter platitudes it is to conceal a
sense of gratification." Eve arched her eyebrows. "I mean, you have
shown me that I share at least one quality with you: instinctive
resentment of the voice of reason."

She pronounced a plaintive "Mon Dieu!" and appealing to Heaven for
compassion declared: "He means again to wrestle spiritually with me
about the proper disposition of my jewels."

"No, madame: pardon. I am contemplatin