t I'd like to see her under stress--"

"Under stress! Good heavens, man! You haven't the slightest conception
of the stress she's been under most of her life! But your criticism
unconsciously pays her the highest tribute, for her kind never show by
word, deed, or look what they are enduring. That frail-appearing girl
has stood up under loads that would have flattened you and me out like
gold leaf!"

"Well, she doesn't look it!" protested Haynerd tenaciously.

"Of course she doesn't! Her kind never do! She's so far and away ahead
of mortals like you and me that she doesn't admit the reality and
power of evil--and, believe me, she's got her reasons for not
admitting it, too! Don't presume to judge her yet. Only try humbly to
attain a little of her understanding and faith; and try to avoid
making yourself ridiculous by criticising what you do not comprehend.
That, indeed, has been mankind's age-long blunder--and they have
thereby made asses of themselves!"

Edward Haynerd, or "Ned," as he was invariably known, prided himself
on being something of a philosopher. And in the name of philosophy he
chose to be quixotic. That one who hated the dissimulations and shams
of our class aristocracy so cordially should have earned his
livelihood--and a good one, too--as publisher of the Social Era, a
sprightly weekly chronicle of happenings in fashionable society, would
have appeared anomalous in any but a man gifted in the Greek
sophistries and their modern innumerable and arid offshoots. Haynerd
was a laughing Democritus, an easy-going, even-tempered fellow, doomed
to be loved, and by the same graces thoroughly cheated by the world in
general. He had in his rapid career of some thirty-five years dipped
deeply into things mundane, and had come to the surface, sputtering
and blowing, with his face well smeared with mud from the shallow
depths. Whereupon he remarked that such an existence was a poor way of
serving the Lord, and turned cynic. His wit was his saving grace. It
was likewise his capital and stock-in-trade. By it he won a place for
himself in the newspaper world, and later, as a credit asset, had
employed it successfully in negotiating for the Social Era. It taking
over the publication of this sheet he had remarked that life was
altogether too short to permit of attempting anything worth while; and
so he forthwith made no further assaults upon fame--assuming that he
had ever done so--but settled comfortably down to the en