en
much longer, they would end by throwing over duty altogether, in sheer
disgust at the whole one-sided business. Mrs. Jordan bristled, and
launched herself upon a long and virtuous sentence. Her daughter Marion
looked up sharply when Madame Bertaux spoke. Then a timid, cautious
glance fell on her mother. Marion had lost her freshness and her
exquisite aetherial quality; otherwise there was little change in her
appearance. Hadria was struck by the way in which she had looked at
Madame Bertaux, and it occurred to her that Marion Fenwick was probably
not quite so acquiescent and satisfied as her friends supposed. But she
would not speak out. Early training had been too strong for her.

Professor Theobald was unusually serious to-night. He did not respond to
Hadria's flippancy. He looked at her with grave, sympathetic eyes. He
seemed to intimate that he understood all that was passing in her mind,
and was not balked by sprightly appearances. There was no sign of
cynicism now, no bandying of compliments. His voice had a new ring of
sincerity. It was a mood that Hadria had noticed in him once or twice
before, and when it occurred, her sympathy was aroused; she felt that
she had done him injustice. _This_ was evidently the real man; his
ordinary manner must be merely the cloak that the civilized being
acquires the habit of wrapping round him, as a protection against the
curiosity of his fellows. The Professor himself expressed it almost in
those words: "It is because of the infinite variety of type and the
complexity of modern life which the individual is called upon to
encounter, that a sort of fancy dress has to be worn by all of us, as a
necessary shield to our individuality and our privacy. We cannot go
through the complex process of adjustment to each new type that we come
across, so by common consent, we wear our domino, and respect the
unwritten laws of the great _bal masque_ that we call society."

The conversation took more and more intimate and serious turns. Mrs.
Jordan was the only check upon it. Madame Bertaux followed up her first
heresy by others even more bold.

"Whenever one wants very particularly to have one's way about a matter,"
she said, "one sneaks off and gets somebody else persuaded that it is
his duty to sacrifice himself for us--_c'est tout simple_--and the
chances are that he meekly does it. If he doesn't, at least one has the
satisfaction of making him feel a guilty wretch, and setting oneself