all the many
thousands you meet through life only to discuss the weather and your
own influenza symptoms--all you ask of them is that they should bring
out their smiling mask as readily as you struggle to assume your own.
Only, as I said before, in love and friendship and the courts of law is
the mask an insult, a tragic disillusion and a sham. In every other
circumstance it is usually a blessing. Without it society, as a social
entertainment, would become impossible. For society is but a
collection of men and women wearing masks, each one vying with the
others to make his mask the most attractive, and, at the same time, the
most concealing. But the worst of wearing masks is, that we become
tired at last of holding them in front of our features. This makes the
entertainment of watching the truth peering through the camouflage one
of the most amusing among the many unpremeditated amusements of the
social world. After all, as I said before, so long as your lover and
your friend, and the witnesses you have subpoenaed on behalf of your
own case, show you _truth_--all you ask of the others is the most
agreeable mask they can put on for the occasion. But even lovers and
friends may deceive you, while some witnesses' idea of the truth in the
law courts hasn't that semblance of reality possessed by the Medium's
description of life in the world beyond. That is what makes matrimony
often such a gamble with loaded dice, and holidays so often more
tedious than work. To be in the company of one's lover for one
ecstatic hour tells one nothing of what he will be when, day after day,
one has to live with him in deadly intimacy until death doth part us
both.

Neither do you really know how much, or how little, your friend means
to you, until you have been with her on a cold railway station for
hours, when fate has done its best to make you both lose your tempers
and your luggage. Only a very _real_ love can survive smiling through
that period when, from almost maudlin appreciation, a husband gradually
sinks into the commonplace mood of taking his soul's mate "for
granted." Only _real_ friendship can live through the disillusionment
of irritable temper, lack of imagination, and boredom so often revealed
while travelling in the company of friends. More than half the mutual
life of lovers and friends is spent behind masks--for masks are
sometimes necessary to keep love and friendship great and true. But
one must, nevertheless