ffoonery."

"The highest humour often moves me to tears," said Mr. Amarinth
musingly. "There is nothing so absolutely pathetic as a really fine
paradox. The pun is the clown among jokes, the well turned paradox is
the polished comedian, and the highest comedy verges upon tragedy, just
as the keenest edge of tragedy is often tempered by a subtle humour. Our
minds are shot with moods as a fabric is shot with colours, and our
moods often seem inappropriate. Everything that is true is
inappropriate."

Lady Locke ate her salmon calmly. She had not been in London for ten
years. Her husband had had a military appointment in the Straits
Settlements, and she had been with him. Two years ago he had died at
his post of duty, and since then she had been living quietly in a German
town. Now she was entering the world again, and it seemed to her odd and
altered. She was interested in all she saw and heard. To-night she found
herself studying a certain phase of modernity. That it sometimes struck
her as maniacal did not detract from its interest. The mad often
fascinate the sane.

"I know," said Reggie Hastings, holding his fair head slightly on one
side, and crumbling his bread with a soft, white hand--"I know. That is
why I laughed at my brother's funeral. My grief expressed itself in that
way. People were shocked, of course, but when are they not shocked?
There is nothing so touching as the inappropriate. I thought my laughter
was very beautiful. Anybody can cry. That was what I felt. I forced my
grief beyond tears, and then my relations said that I was heartless."

"But surely tears are the natural expression of sad feelings," said Lady
Locke. "We do not weep at a circus or at a pantomime; why should we
laugh at a funeral?"

"I think a pantomime is very touching," said Reggie. "The pantaloon is
one of the most luridly tragic figures in art or in life. If I were a
great actor, I would as soon play the pantaloon as 'King Lear.'"

"Perhaps his mournful possibilities have been increased since I have
been out of England," said Lady Locke. "Ten years ago he was merely a
shadowy absurdity."

"Oh! he has not changed," said Mr. Amarinth. "That is so wonderful. He
never develops at all. He alone understands the beauty of rigidity, the
exquisite serenity of the statuesque nature. Men always fall into the
absurdity of endeavouring to develop the mind, to push it violently
forward in this direction or in that. The mind should be recept